


Kamen Rider Bloodstone

by starofjustice



Series: Kamen Rider Bloodstone [1]
Category: Castlevania, Darkstalkers (Video Games), Kamen Rider, Monster High, Rosario + Vampire, Undertale (Video Game), モンスター娘のいる日常 | Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-05-29 02:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 71,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6354979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starofjustice/pseuds/starofjustice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new school with new kids seemed like the perfect thing, but all supernatural hell is about to break loose and Nigeki and his new friends are going to end up right in the middle of it...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kindred

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlindTiger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindTiger/gifts).



**I’ve touched up the first few chapters to make sure the characters of Undertale have a definite presence a little sooner. They’re a very prominent part of this story, I promise you that.**

 

XXX

 

            A low, hoarse wind blew through the barren trees and tossed the girl’s long hair up. She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a deep breath of the cool air to calm herself. The yellow sky and the leafless trees were strange, and the headstones lining the path to the main building were unsettling. But the blood-red ocean was strangely reassuring, and if nothing else, this school couldn’t possibly be any worse than the two schools before this one. Here she’d be around other kids she actually had something in common with. Something _big_. She clenched her fist and declared to herself, she’d definitely make friends at _this_ school.

            And she kicked the ground to start her bike rolling down the steep hill where she’d stopped. Her surroundings stopped seeming so intimidating as they whizzed past, and she allowed herself to feel a little more confidence about the upcoming year. She wondered how many kids there’d be in her homeroom, what she should say when she met them or if she should let them come to her…

            Perhaps her attention should have been on the path, because she suddenly rounded a bend and a boy on foot seemed to appear out of nowhere in front of her. She screamed in surprise and leaned hard away from him, crashing her bike against one of the trees and sending her tumbling into the grass. At the same time the boy tried to hurl himself out of her way, but he slipped on a patch of gravel and crashed headfirst into a cluster of tombstones, smashing one in half with his forehead. A pool of red seeped out from under his bag.

            “Are you okay?!” she screamed and crawled over to take a look. She froze as she spotted the redness on the ground beside him and the enticing smell drifting from it. It was _blood_.

            But then the boy groaned and rolled onto his back, and she could see there was none of it on him, just a dark red stain forming in one corner of his bag. He met her eyes for a second and she blushed, embarrassed at having mistaken the blood for his. Then she thought to ask if the blood wasn’t his, where was it coming from? The boy sniffed once, groaned in dismay and pulled out a plastic bag with only a small pool of ruby-red liquid remaining in one corner, which had obviously been popped when he fell. “Damn it,” he groaned then held the bag to his mouth and swallowed the blood still left inside. As he did she noticed how his canine teeth stuck out ever so slightly farther than most people’s.

            “You’re a vampire too!” she exclaimed before she could stop herself.

            “Isn’t that something we’re supposed to keep secret?” the boy asked. He muttered a curse and threw his empty blood bag into the trees, then extended his hand to her and helped her up.

            “Well, yeah…,” she replied sheepishly. “Just a little glad to see another one.” She looked him over, noticing first of course the green blazer, tan slacks and white dress shirt that marked the uniform of the school she’d been heading for when she’d almost run him down. Despite having just smashed through solid rock with his head the only sign was few motes of dust clinging to his face and shoulders he was brushing off. His face was thin, almost feminine in its shape, and his black hair hung until it just touched the neckline of his blazer. His eyes were a rich shade of blue that she thought looked regal somehow, but as she was looking at them she realized how intently he was squinting at her.

            “…don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked. “I’m sure I saw you before, except you had lighter hair.”

            “Oh! I’m Moka. Moka Akashiya!” she said, looking away. She wondered frantically how to try to explain that, if it might drive someone away or not, especially with them being another vampire.

            He nodded thoughtfully and bowed. “Pleasure to meet you, Moka. Nigeki Hitoribo,” he introduced himself. “Again, if this wasn’t our first.”

            “ _The_ Hitoribos?” Moka asked, bright green eyes going a little wide. Hitoribo was one of the more prominent vampire clans, or so she remembered her family saying when telling her to be on her best behavior before one of their big parties. Was that where they’d seen each other before…?

            “Yeah,” Nigeki said but waved his hand dismissively. “Would you mind keeping it to yourself, though? My father wants me keeping a low profile at school.”

            “Of course!” Moka said, giving him her best smile. He smiled back and color rushed to her cheeks, but she prayed he didn’t notice.

            “Well then, thanks, but we’d probably better get going,” Nigeki nodded and pulled her bike up for her. They walked through the lifeless forest up to the building on the other side, which looked more like an ancient gothic cathedral than what it actually was, with the dark gray stone, turrets and huge archways. A banner was hung over the main doors with huge red characters reading “WELCOME TO YOUKAI ACADEMY.”

 

XXX

 

            Nigeki seemed to disappear into thin air while Moka was locking up her bike. She looked around a little before realizing she had to report to her first class, and then was surprised to see him at a desk next to the windows. On the floor next to him was a brand new book bag, with no huge blood stain in the corner. That explained it. Moka slipped into the desk next to his, not quite noticing she was cutting off a girl with bright blue hair and a yellow sweater vest instead of a jacket.

            “Why’d you run away like that?” she whispered over to him. “I didn’t say anything, did I?”

            “No, my dad called me to check in on me and I had to run and buy a new bag before classes started,” Nigeki replied. “I’m sorry, I really am. But he does this all time. He called to check in on me five times before I even got here. And if he calls me, I _have_ to answer.” As he said that he reached into his bag and flipped a switch on the side of his phone to put in on vibrate. “Well, most of the time,” he corrected.

            “ **Good morning!** ” exclaimed an extremely peppy voice, and Moka giggled as Nigeki actually jumped in his seat in surprise. The voice exactly matched its owner, a young blonde woman in a brown miniskirt and tiger-striped tube top, with a necklace shaped like a cat’s bell around her neck and thick red glasses. “Welcome to homeroom! I’ll be your teacher, Miss Nekonome, mew!”

            “Mew?” a few confused voices raised at the same time.

            “Now, before we begin, let me just remind everyone of this school’s most important rule: you’re to remain in human form at all times!” Miss Nekonome informed the class. “We want to keep things nice and friendly here, and more importantly nice and friendly _out there_ so the humans will stay nice and friendly _with you_. This is going to be a very special year because not only do we have monster teens from all over the country joining us, we even have some from an underground kingdom that finally found their freedom! That’s going to be part of the secret all of you are expected to keep, though.”

            Nigeki gazed absently out the window as Miss Nekonome continued on briefly in this vein. Moka didn’t entirely blame him, she was sure he was thinking the same thing she was: they both belonged to one of the breeds of monster that was most reviled by human beings, as she’d had the chance to see firsthand. Having to avoid provoking violence from humans was nothing the two of them needed to hear, she was sure. After a few minutes, Nigeki leaned over and whispered to her. “Hey, what do you want to bet she’s a bakeneko?”

            “You can already tell?” Moka giggled quietly, although she’d guessed something along those lines herself.

            Their discussion ended when another student next to them spoke up suddenly. “But who cares about humans?” asked a broad-shouldered boy with wiry brown hair and a sneer on his craggy face. He had two metal studs in each ear and one in his lower lip. Two other boys in the row behind him sneered right along with his comment. “They don’t have strength, or speed, or anything like a monster does. They have to get all their powers from their weapons. Even the Belmonts were nothing without all that magic crap they had.”

            “Well, Mister…,” Miss Nekonome started to reply, then had to stop and check a class roster in her hand, “…Saizou Komiya, the Belmont line is an example of exactly why it’s so important not to make ourselves targets…” she answered, but Nigeki sighed and looked away again. He sat through the rest of the first period in silence and scowling slightly, like the line of questioning had touched on something uncomfortable for him. As soon as the period was over he picked up his bag and left the room as quickly as he could. Moka held out her hand but he didn’t seem to notice, and she wondered worriedly about what had gotten under his skin like that.

 

XXX

 

            Moka had a while to think about it, as she had whirlwind tour of her other classes to make it through. Most of them went right over her head as she tried to puzzle out what might’ve been on her new friend’s mind, until she got to her Home Economics class.

            “Hello, girls! And…also some boys, looks like,” said the teacher with the brightest, friendliest smile on her face. “I’m Mrs. Dreemurr, or Toriel, if you’re feeling friendly, I suppose.”

She was a tall woman in a purple dress, with generous curves and a slightly plump face, lightly wrinkled around the mouth as if she’d had a habit of smiling a lot for a long time. She had waves and waves of curly white hair, but somehow it seemed implausible that it could come from age. It looked so pure, almost like fur.

“See?” one boy in front of Moka whispered to another next to him. “This teacher’s a complete babe, isn’t she? I told you this was a good idea.”

Moka was startled to hear that kind of talk, but she studied Mrs. Dreemurr’s face as she went around asking every student in her class their name and warmly welcoming them to school. She seemed even more excited to be teaching them than some of the students seemed to be to finally be away from home. And Moka had never really thought about such a thing before, but there _was_ something about Mrs. Dreemurr that seemed inviting in more than a friendly way…

“And what do I call you, child?”

The vampiress almost fell out of her chair in surprise when she realized she’d been thinking so hard about Mrs. Dreemurr she didn’t even notice the teacher was standing right in front of her. “Um…hello! My name is Moka! Akashiya. It’s a pleasure to be here, miss.”

Mrs. Dreemurr smiled and sighed wistfully. “I _wish_ I was that young again,” she said, and a few scattered chuckles went up. She finished greeting her students and taught them how to make maki rolls, a fairly simple dish but one she seemed proud to show off to them. As the next class was about to begin, though, she took Moka aside.

“Are you all right, child?” Mrs. Dreemurr whispered to her. “You seemed distracted and worried when you came in.”

“How could you tell?” Moka asked in astonishment.

Mrs. Dreemurr smiled faintly and put a supportive hand on her shoulder. “I might be new to life around here but I’m not new to life. If you have a real problem, or you know someone who does, you shouldn’t be expected to carry that weight all by yourself.”

Moka looked up at the teacher and smiled. “You’re right! I won’t let him get so upset! I’ll find out what’s going on! Thank you Dreemurr-sama!”

Toriel waved and smiled faintly as Moka hurried out. “Can’t help myself, can I?” she murmured to herself, hoping this child’s time turned out as well as the last one’s.

Whether she liked it or not, she had a feeling she’d be dealing with Moka Akashiya and that friend of hers herself, soon enough.

 

XXX

 

            It wasn’t until break period that Moka tracked Nigeki down again, finding him sitting on a bench in the quad sipping a can of green tea. He waved at her as he saw her coming and waiting as she bought a can of tomato juice from a vending machine nearby and sat down next to him.

            “Is…everything okay?” she asked him uncertainly after a minute of uncomfortable silence. “You left in such a hurry…”

            “I just don’t like being reminded of what people think should be done to vampires. Or even the ones who want to _be_ vampires,” Nigeki answered her with a sigh. “I’ve been having these, like, really bad headaches lately when I get anxious. Nobody’s really sure why. That was one of the reasons my family sent me here instead of having a private tutor like my brothers. They thought having friends and activities and stuff would help take my mind off my little…condition.”

            Moka looked him in the eye and said, a little shyly, “Well, I wouldn’t mind having a few friends here either.”

            He sighed but looked up at her with a smile that seemed tired but appreciative. “Thanks, Moka,” he said.

            “We’d like having some nice, pretty friends like that too,” said a voice with a familiar sneer, and Nigeki groaned as the boy with the piercings from homeroom seemed to appear from nowhere behind a column with the other two boys from behind him in class behind him now too. “Why’s a smoking hot babe like you hanging out with a wuss like him who gets sick just from people talking about the Belmonts around him?” Saizou jeered at Nigeki.

            “It’s not like that,” Nigeki said, clenching his teeth.

            Moka stood up and interposed herself between Nigeki and Saizou. “Could you please leave us alone? We don’t want any trouble.”  
            “Neither do we,” said Saizou. “Do we boys? We just want to make friends with a pretty girl, isn’t that what you said you wanted?”

            Nigeki grunted and got up, shooting Saizou an angry scowl. “Didn’t you hear what she said? Just leave her alone, why can’t you--”

            Saizou’s hand shot out, grabbed Nigeki around the throat and lifted him off the ground. “I heard what she said, she wants to make new friends at school. Why are _you_ trying to make that hard for her?”

            “Let him go!” Moka screamed, and Saizou froze, but it wasn’t on account of what she’d said. Nigeki’s eyes suddenly flashed a bright yellow almost like headlights and with a snarl he kicked Saizou in the chest, knocking him back into his two cronies.

            “Don’t push me,” Nigeki warned. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

            Moka took him by the hand and hurried away, casting a worried look over her shoulder at Saizou, who glared back angrily as the two vampires slipped away, unaware others had seen what happened.

 

XXX

 

            Moka was relieved to find the roof empty and stopped to collect herself. Nigeki clutched his head for a minute but leaned against the railing and looked over at Moka with his normal dark blue eyes. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, Moka. I haven’t even been here one day and everything’s going wrong.”

            Seeing her chances of befriending someone in this strange new place slipping away, Moka took a bold step. “Well, maybe we have something in common.”

            “What’s that?”

            She clutched a silver cross hanging from a black choker around her neck, with a red gem that looked almost like an eye in the middle. “You see this? My mother made this…it suppresses the aggressive part of me. If it came off somehow, I’d turn back into my true form.”

            “Why would she do that?” Nigeki asked.

            Moka’s face fell slightly. “I don’t know. I assume it was really important, but she never told me. It’s kind of like you, huh? You try to hold in your aggression, seems like. I mean…you don’t seem like a violent person. Or at least, you seem like you don’t want to be.”

            “Of course I don’t want to be! What good does fighting do?” Nigeki replied, and Moka smiled with relief. “Maybe I should get your mother to make me one of those…”

            “I don’t know where she is,” Moka replied sadly.

            “I’m sorry,” Nigeki sighed, and looked away.

            Moka placed a dainty hand on his shoulder. “I’m the one who brought it up.”

            After a minute Nigeki looked back at her and managed a smile. “Feel like getting some air? I need to get away from here for a while…I wouldn’t blame you if you said no, though, I realize how creepy that must sound coming from somebody you just met,” he said, his smile turning sheepish. Then he laughed a limp little laugh. “God, I’m bad at this. I’m sorry.”

            A warm sensation came over Moka that she’d felt a few times in the past, almost a second presence lightly guiding her actions. When she’d seen someone or something truly lost and vulnerable. It reminded her of someone extremely familiar yet whose name or likeness she could never quite place.

Gently she took his hand. “I’d really like that,” she said with a smile.

 

XXX

 

            The barren woods surrounding the school were less forbidding now that Moka was there with a friend. Nigeki had managed to relax in the solitude, but he hadn’t said anything else about what was bothering him as Moka had hoped he might. In fact he kept surreptitiously glancing over his shoulder as they walked, obviously trying to keep her from noticing but not succeeding.

            After a while Nigeki tried to break the awkward silence that was growing between them. “Hey, Moka? You seem really eager to make friends, even if it’s with someone as weird as me. I don’t think I get that, people would probably be lining up to make friends with a girl as pretty as you.”

            Moka made a sound of disgust. “If they’re anything like that Saizou boy, I’ll pass, thanks.”

            “But if they’re anything like me, you’ll say ‘sure, let’s go for a walk on the far side of the grounds where nobody knows where we are,’ I guess,” Nigeki pointed out.

            “After you saved us from those bullies,” she reminded him.

            “I still shouldn’t be taking you so far away from the main buildings. I really am blowing it already, aren’t I?” Nigeki laughed a little mournfully. “I’m supposed to lay low, but it hasn’t even been one day and I already got into a fight…HOLY SHIT!”

            Suddenly Nigeki shoved Moka away and she landed in a heap, but before she could demand what he was doing she saw him hurl himself backwards just before a giant rock crashed to the ground where they’d been a second ago.

            Walking up the path the pair of vampires had just taken was Saizou, with his two fellow bullies right behind, that seeming immovable sneer still on his face. “You just had to go and make it personal, didn’t you, punk?” he asked.

            Nigeki got his feet and held up his hand. “Look,” he said with a sigh, “I’m from the Hitoribo family.”

            “Is that supposed to make me change my mind? You gonna call your daddy to come fight for you or some crap like that?” Saizou retorted, the others laughing.

            Nigeki dug into his book bag and produced a stack of bills. “It means I can make it worth your while to leave us alone.” Suddenly Saizou’s friends grabbed him by the arms, and Saizou himself kneed Nigeki in the stomach. He snatched the money from Nigeki’s hand and kicked him in the stomach again.

            “You just made my day even better, rich boy,” Saizou said before he punched Nigeki in the face. Nigeki’s head jerked back and a stream of dark blood dripped down his face as he stared at Saizou with disgust in his eyes.

            ”Is this what you _do_?” Nigeki grunted. “Push people around to make you feel bigger or some garbage?”

            “Just giving them what they want,” Saizou said. “Humans expect me to be a monster, then I’ll give them one. I’ve done it, rich boy. You should try it too, the perks are pretty nice…”

            As this played out, Moka watched in confusion. Nigeki was a vampire just like her, one of the strongest of monsters. And unlike her, his power wasn’t suppressed by anything. Surely he could easily pull himself free, but instead he took it as Saizou punched him in the face again and knocked Nigeki back into the arms of the other thugs. Saizou brought back his fist, coated with a dark layer of Nigeki’s blood, to punch him again.

            “NO!” Moka screamed and ran up to grab his arm. Nigeki gasped and looked at her in anger and yanked one arm free to try to push Moka away.

            “You shouldn’t be--” he started to say, but his palm hit the Rosario on her neck. Instantly her body went agonizingly cold, then a burst of heat seemed to explode out from the Rosario. There was a flash of light that flung all of them around the clearing.

            Saizou and his friends got up, ready to teach Moka a lesson about getting in their way, but the vampire girl they saw wasn’t the one who’d been there a minute ago. She looked taller, more poised, her hair ice-white now, and her eyes an angry shade of red that didn’t look the slightest bit impressed by their superior numbers.

            “So, you want to be a monster, huh?” she asked, her voice slightly deeper and vastly more confident. “You look like you’ve got a long way to go to me.”

            “Why don’t you take another look?” Saizou grinned and his body started to bloat, shredding out of his uniform. In a few seconds he was eight feet tall, his head stooped forward slightly from the weight of his massive arms that hung nearly to his knees. Rows of bony spikes had grown from his shoulders, chest and elbows and covered his fingers like gloves, ending in clawed tips on his fingers. His two friends had undergone identical transformations behind him. Moka had no trouble recognizing them for orcs, strong monsters but almost to a one stupid, arrogant and always looking for a fight.

            Then Saiziou rushed at Moka, thick saliva spraying from the three-foot tongue swinging out of his mouth. Moka grimaced as some landed on her uniform, but as soon as Saizou came close enough she threw a high sweeping kick that connected to the side of his head and knocked him down. Immediately he was back up and grabbed at her leg but she easily backflipped out of his reach, rebounded off a tree and performed a vicious scissor kick that connected with his chin and knocked him flat on his back.

            “Pitiful.” Saizou roared and charged her with his gigantic arms outstretched but Moka turned and caught his hands against her own. Impossibly, she dug in her heels and held the huge orc in a stalemate, not budging from her place.

            The other two orcs exchanged glances and were about to help Saizou when from behind them Nigeki snarled. His eyes were burning yellow now, and his movements were stiff as he got to his feet.

            “I tried to avoid this,” he muttered. “I tried…but…you…HEN…SHIN!!”

            A black belt with a buckle made of tarnished silver appeared out of nowhere around his waist. In the center of the buckle was a large circular gem, mostly a dark red but with veins of black that seemed to shift and throb inside it as the two orcs watched.

            But then the gem blazed for a second, and a strange red clay-like matter started forming on Nigeki’s body on top of his uniform. The clots quickly grew together into a thick red armor around his body, running through with black lines like veins that pulsed just like the ones in the gem. Black boots and gauntlets with curved, slender blades running up to his elbows formed on him, and a white orb appeared behind him, opened outward into a pyramid shape behind him and then closed around his face, forming into a skull-like mask. The burning yellow of Nigeki’s eyes still shined through the holes.

            Then he suddenly dashed at them and slashed them both across the chests with the blades on his gauntlets. Blood oozed from the wounds and the orcs looked down at them in disbelief, then over at Nigeki as he stared them down and waited for them to make the next move.

            They did, splitting apart and rushing him head-on. Both orcs smashed a fist into his chest that he took without budging, then grabbed them by their shoulders and flipped them over his head with a crash.

            Meanwhile Moka broke her deadlock with Saizou when she suddenly jumped and slammed her knee into his chin with a crack that seemed to echo throughout the clearing for a second. He staggered away for a few steps and Moka knocked him down with a spinning jump kick of terrifying grace.

            “Know your place,” she said as disdainfully as she could then took her attention off her opponent for the moment to look at how the rest of the fight was going. Nigeki, or whatever he’d become, fought with a style that was strong but crude, relying entirely on his superior force as he walked straight into the orcs’ punches before knocking them flying with astonishingly powerful punches of his own.

            “I’ll get you for that, you miserable bitch!” Saizou bellowed behind her and charged, but with the most flawless calm Moka somersaulted over his head then slammed her foot right between his shoulders to knock him toward Nigeki, who grabbed the orc, hoisted him above his head and bodyslammed him into the other two.

            Suddenly the yellow light from Nigeki’s eyes burned twice as brightly. He held his arms out at his side and growled as the redness covering his body started to shimmer slightly. From where she was Moka could feel an incredible power gathering in him. Then, he unleashed it.

            “ **Blood Riser!** ” a gravelly demonic voice spoke from his belt, and Nigeki roared and smashed his fists down on the ground in front of him. A crack appeared and stretched across the ground to where the orcs lay, and suddenly a geyser of dark red liquid erupted from underneath them and sent the three thugs spinning out of sight above the trees.

            The skeletal mask segmented apart and pulled back away from Nigeki’s head before disappearing along with his belt. The red armor covering the rest of his body seemed to burst, spraying crimson droplets everywhere that sank into the ground.

            He looked Moka in the eyes, his teeth clenched and a tear of frustration slipping out his eye and down one cheek. Then before she could stop him he’d run off into the trees.

 

XXX

 

            **Well, haven’t done a work like this in a while, but here it is, and hopefully not too bad at that.**

**Don’t know how well I made it clear, but I was trying to indicate that when Moka’s Rosario was unlocked it had more to do with the opposing power of that and Nigeki’s belt, which will be explored more down the road.**

**But yeah, I’m trying something a little different, both for myself and the story of Rosario x Vampire. Hope you all enjoy.**


	2. Charmed

             Youkai Academy began to buzz with rumors almost as soon as the school year began, but one of the most repeated ones concerned when three panicked boys had come barreling out of the woods behind the school screaming about another student who’d sliced their flesh and blasted them into the sky with a fountain of blood.

            A few students got worried that some super-strong lunatic had gotten by the barrier somehow, but then someone put a name to the face of the leader of the victims. It was Saizou Komiya the notorious troublemaker who’d been transferred to Youkai Academy after being bounced out of another pair of schools. So that… _someone_ could keep him under close observation.

            Immediately most of the students started to laugh behind Saizou’s back that the big bully had been beaten at his own game the first time he even tried to start something with another student at Youkai Academy. But a few who crossed paths with the student he claimed was responsible paused and pulled back a few steps when he walked by.

            The slender dark-haired boy wore a perpetual scowl on his face nobody recognized and who seemed all too eager to avoid others’ company as well. He sat by himself at meals, didn’t speak up in class and seemed to disappear into the dormitories as soon as classes had ended for the day. He’d even made a point of duck a pretty pink-haired girl who’d tried to initiate conversation with him a few times. All his hallmates heard from him were times when it sounded like someone in his room was trying to play the flute, and not very well.

            Strangely nobody seemed to know the boy’s family name, even his attackers who remembered him trying to buy them off. A few students swore Saizou had ranted it to them, but they couldn’t seem to remember what it was anymore. In response to that other students had suggested they were afraid of the antisocial boy punching their faces in like he had Saizou’s.

            All that talk suited one girl just fine. An angry, violent loner was a challenge worthy of her talents. Plus it’d show that obnoxious pink-haired bimbo just where she rated.

            It was going to be a good year.

XXX

 

            Moka sighed as she looked up at the open window that she was pretty sure was the one to Nigeki’s room. It had sounded like someone was practicing music but had stopped when she knocked, and her fears were confirmed that he had indeed jumped out the window to get away from her.

            _What a weakling_ , the derisive voice of her aggressive alter ego said from the back of her mind as the red gem in her Rosario shone. _He runs right into a fight but runs away from an ordinary girl._

            “He’s not like that!” Moka insisted, unwilling to give up on someone who was as afraid of himself as Nigeki seemed to be. “He tried to protect me when those bullies attacked us, he can’t be a coward.”

            _Then why can’t he even explain himself to you?_ the other Moka pressed. _Should that be so hard to someone who was flinging orcs around and taking their strongest punches like they were nothing?_

            Moka sighed. That was a point. Why was Nigeki going so far out of his way to avoid her since his fight with the orcs? There had to be a reason, and she wasn’t ready to give up on hearing it just yet…

 

XXX

 

            As the sun set, soft notes drifted through the forest near the edge of campus. Unnoticed by their maker, a bat-like shape flew down nearby.

            Nigeki stood on a branch on one of the higher leafless trees overlooking the ocean while the sun seemed to sink into the blood-red waters. Held to his mouth was a brass flute and he slowly played a song he was starting to become familiar with but after a few seconds hit a sour note and grunted in aggravation. He glared at the instrument like it was at fault, then sighed and raised it to his lips again.

            “That sounds nice,” said a pleasant female voice from the ground, and Nigeki squawked in surprise, lost his balance and fell off the branch. His free hand whipped out and grabbed it, leaving him hanging there while he glanced down to see who’d startled him.

            It was a girl with bright blue hair, wearing the uniform of Youkai Academy, but a yellow sweater vest instead of a jacket like most students did. She giggled lightly at the comical sight of Nigeki hanging from a tree branch by one hand then looked up at him with a smile so warm and friendly he almost let go. “What are you doing up there?” she asked.

            He swung himself forward, then back and used his moment to swing himself into a crouch on the branch then stood up again before he answered. “I’m practicing my instrument.”  
            “Why are you practicing in a tree?” she said, completely unfazed.

            “So people will think I’m crazy and leave me alone.”

            “It doesn’t work.”

            Nigeki jumped down and landed in front of the girl, who didn’t move from her spot. “Look,” he said gently, “even I’m not crazy, I’m still no good with this thing.”

            “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be,” she said, meeting his gaze with her spellbinding purple eyes. “Why don’t we go somewhere and you can play for me?”

            Nigeki blinked as he felt disoriented for a second, remembering he was trying to avoid people, but looked back at the girl with her dazzling smile and eyes he could drown in, and smiled slightly back. “That’s a good idea,” he said.

            She grinned even wider. “You learn quick,” she said. “What’s your name?”

            “Ni…Nigeki,” he replied, faintly aware he hadn’t been interested in this a minute ago, but this girl was just so pretty and friendly.

            “That’s a nice name,” the girl said. “My name’s Kurumu…isn’t that a nice name too?”

            “Yes…that’s a very nice name.”

 

XXX

 

            Kurumu led Nigeki a little further away from the school, and started to fan herself with her hand as she did. “Oh, isn’t it hot today?” she asked, and popped the top button on her blouse. She smirked as Nigeki’s eyes zeroed in on her chest even in his dull state of mind.

            “Yes, so hot…when did it get so hot?” he asked as he unbuttoned and untucked his own shirt. Kurumu leered for a second before seeing something that froze her in her tracks.

            “What’s that?” she asked and started to reach out to touch her fingertip to a shiny black stain or scar on Nigeki’s chest right over his heart, a little smaller than her clenched fist. But Nigeki lightly pushed her hand away.

            “It’s the symbol of my taint,” he told her.

            She raised an eyebrow incredulously. “Your _taint_?”

            “When I was in the womb my mother was attacked by something…we call them Tears, like the kind you shed when you’re sad,” Nigeki dazedly explained. “My family thinks they’re from somewhere in Makai Realm, but we’re not sure. But I was infected, and when I get angry or upset that part of me can get stronger. When that part gets stronger…”

            Kurumu looked at him with amused disbelief. “You’re kidding me, right?”

            But Nigeki shook his head. “When it gets stronger I lose control, I lash out…that’s why my brother gave me the Bloodstone. It strengthens the monster part of me, to hold the Tear part back.”

            “That’s cute, but you don’t have to make up stories to make this more fun,” Kurumu giggled. She made a note to call her mom about this, though. Since when was this something that happened?

            But in the bushes nearby crouched a pink-haired beauty whose lower lip trembled with rage at what was going on.

            _So not just a coward but a philanderer too_ , said the Inner Moka. _He’s willing to tell a tramp like that his secret, but not you, the one who tried to be an honest friend._

            “It’s not like that,” Moka snapped quietly, but if what Nigeki had said was true it explained how he’d been cutting himself off from everyone. She was pretty sure she’d heard of an artifact called the Bloodstone once or twice as well. It was supposed to be some kind of talisman that could temporarily increase a vampire’s innate powers, and vampires who’d owned it had used it in the past when going into battle. Supposedly they’d been able to wipe out entire groups of lesser monsters, but they were left weak after using the gem’s powers.

            “I’m not making it up,” Nigeki droned, but Kurumu only shook her head and smiled.

            “Well, if you’re so broken up inside, maybe I can take your mind off it,” she said, and pursed her lips and leaned closer to him.

            “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!!” Moka screamed as she erupted from the bushes, pointing an accusing finger at Kurumu. She stomped over and grabbed Nigeki by the arm before Kurumu could complete her kiss and started to drag Nigeki away.

Kurumu smirked and slipped her hands onto her shapely hips. “Oh my _god_ , were you seriously spying on us? Are you _that_ jealous?”

Moka just glared at the other girl as she stomped away with her fellow vampire in tow. Kurumu made no move to stop them; she’d let this Moka stew in how out of her league she was for a while before finishing her off.

 

XXX

 

After a minute the main school building came into view and Moka sighed with relief, since at least it’d be easier to avoid that girl with lots of other students around. She looked back at Nigeki to make sure he was okay, but gaped in alarm to see a faint yellow light in his eyes like during the fight with Saizou.

And more than that he was mumbling something over and over again, “All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to the dust…All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to dust…”

“Nigeki?” Moka asked, but he just kept muttering the same nihilistic chant over and over. With more strength than she meant to, Moka grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Cut it out! You’re away from her now! Everything’s okay!”

Nigeki’s head bobbed violently back and forth at Moka’s shaking before he gasped and twisted, breaking free but falling on his face in the process. “What happened?” he groaned.

“That girl did something to you…do you feel okay?”

“Girl,” Nigeki answered, as if it was the first time he’d ever heard the word. “Yeah, a girl with blue hair, right? My head feels fuzzy…” Neither of them noticed a shiny black shell around his neck receding out of sight below his collar.

“Do you feel okay?” Moka asked again.

He took a minute to collect himself, then nodded. “I feel all right…but why are you here? Why have you been following me around even after that fight with the orcs?”

“Well, why did you run away?” Moka asked, turning the question back on him. “You’re supposed to be here to make friends and join in, right? To keep that Tear thing from taking you over, that thing you told that girl about.”

Nigeki sighed and stood up. “So I told her about that…and you heard it, huh?”

“Is it true?”

He sighed again. “Yes, it’s true. The Bloodstone lets me transform into that armor I had on when we... the other you and I fought those orcs. If I start losing control of my emotions, I’m supposed to use the Bloodstone to enhance the vampiric part of me so I’m not overwhelmed. I’ve learned to suppress them pretty well, but there are times I just get pushed too far.”

“But it doesn’t start to come out if you feel good emotions, does it? That wouldn’t make any sense,” Moka said.

“No,” Nigeki answered. “At least I don’t think so. But if I lost control I’m sure I’d lash out at whoever’s around. That’s why I’ve been at home until now, and why I’ve been avoiding people since the fight. I don’t need other idiots starting shit with me and getting maimed if I turn into one thing or the other.”

All of a sudden she took his hand with hers. “I don’t want to start a fight with you,” Moka said, and managed a soft smile.

His instinct was to pull away, but he didn’t. “If someone else does, and I lose it like I did around the orcs, you could get hurt.”

Moka looked him straight in the face. “I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing…but I bet it’s a lot less likely to happen if you have someone else around to help if things get rough for a while.” She swallowed uncertainly as if doubting her own words, but Nigeki smiled a tired smile. Tired of fighting his inner demons himself, she hoped.

“If you’re sure,” he said, “I think I’ll give it another try.”

“I’m sure,” Moka said and clenched his hand.

 

XXX

 

By the time they made it back to campus the sun was almost totally down. Moka lightly squeezed Nigeki’s hand and turned down the path heading to the girls’ dorm. “See you tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yeah, promise,” Nigeki replied. “And Moka? I’m sorry I avoided you after the fight. Force of habit, I guess.”

“Well, you won’t do it again, so I forgive you,” she said and playfully stuck out her tongue. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Nigeki echoed and made his way back to his own small room on the third floor. As he clicked on his desk lamp and got out his books to get started on his homework, he realized he was still smiling. An idea came into his head, and he checked the black stain above his heart.

It had shrunk by nearly half.

He wasn’t aware of two pairs of eyes spying on him through the window as he buttoned up his shirt and got to work on his assignments.

A few hours later when he swallowed his nightly Hypnocil pill to keep himself from dreaming, he didn’t notice one was still there.

 

XXX

 

The next day was cheerier. Classes were reassuringly normal, although her science teacher, a short, chubby blonde woman with thick glasses and overbite seemed to keep glancing furtively her way.

Alphys Alphaisa, an almost painfully fake name, was demonstrating how electrical current worked, spending almost two minutes showing in detail how she hooked up some copper wires from a portable generator, a silver lunchbox-sized device with a showy Jacob’s Ladder on the top, to a purple and black robot doll with an overly-stylized bishonen’s face with dark hair dangling down over one side of its face.

“Now you’ll see not just how electricity works, but how a powerful artificial intelligence can work!” she declared proudly. “Mettaton-Chibi, go!”

“OOOOOOH YES,” the robot doll declared in a reverberating voice, sounding almost aroused. It got up and struck a provocative pose, while Miss Alphaisa grinned like a maniac.

“Big deal!” a boy in the back called out. “So your little toy can talk!”

Miss Alphaisa smiled. “Oh, it can do a lot more than talk. Mettaton, tell us who the prettiest girl in this class is, huh?”

Most of the class groaned as the robot lifted one leg and spun around and around on its toe with one arm outstretched. They were obviously expecting it to end on Miss Alphaisa herself, but instead it pointed out into the students. The boys it pointed to leaned away to see who it meant, and Moka’s face erupted in a flaming blush when she realized the robot was pointing out _her_.

“Nice pick, Mettaton,” Miss Alphaisa smiled proudly, focusing her gaze on Moka. “Even a robot this small can learn to identify a beautiful girl. That’s the wonders of modern technology! Impressed now, kiddo?”

The boy just cleared his throat and crossed his arms in answer to Miss Alphaisa’s question. Hiding her face in her hands, Moka looked over at Nigeki, and he smiled supportively which got the young vampiress to lower her hands and smile back faintly. However she was so grateful to her friend’s support she failed to notice the fuming blue-haired girl watching from behind him.

The teacher couldn’t help noticing, though. Classroom intrigue around this girl, huh? She surreptitiously jotted down a note to herself. Maybe worth keeping an eye on…

 

XXX

 

Nigeki and Moka sat together at lunch, talking about the simple, harmless topic of what they were liking about school so far.

“Being around kids I have something in common with is nice,” Moka said. “Even if…nobody else has really tried to talk me yet.”

“They’re just intimidated by your beauty,” Nigeki said. “You can’t really blame them for that, can you?”

She laughed, but looked at him seriously then. “How come you aren’t?”

Nigeki opened his mouth to answer, then stopped, not sure what his answer even was. “Maybe I just haven’t met enough pretty girls yet to know I should be,” he said with a shrug.

“What about you?” Moka prompted. Nigeki shrugged. “You don’t know?”

“I haven’t really enjoyed being here before last night,” he explained.

Moka smiled a little in reply but said nothing as she noticed something over his shoulder. Kurumu was sitting at a table surrounded by a group of boys but was staring hard at the two of them, violet eyes narrowed.

            She doubted Kurumu had given up yet.

 

XXX

 

            After class Nigeki excused himself to call his family. Moka couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy at that. Her family had hardly checked in on her at all since she’d been sent to live in the human world years ago. It was a big part of why she wasn’t in any hurry to lose the first person interested in being her friend.

            He’d agreed to meet her out in the quad, but Nigeki had hardly been gone a minute before he called out from behind and jogged up to her side with a smile. “So…what do you feel like doing this afternoon, beautiful?” he asked.

            “Beautiful?” Moka asked, her cheeks coloring. Her eyelids drifted low and she looked away from Nigeki’s face. She coughed and collected herself then asked, “Is everything okay at home? Did you talk about anything special with your family?”

            Nigeki shrugged. “Oh just…,” he paused, seeming to struggle for a second to find something to say. “...family stuff. You know.”

            “Not really.”

            He smiled and shrugged, then slipped his arm around Moka’s shoulders and she felt herself blushing again. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s go somewhere nice and private.”

            “Okay…,” Moka said. Did Nigeki really like her that much? Is that why he’d been so afraid of hurting her if he lost control of himself? They’d barely known each other for a week, and only been having civil conversations for about a day.

            But she managed a smile. She’d met another vampire who at least tried not to be a complete psychopath. She shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth with all those questions. She’d sworn she’d make friends and make this school experience great. What was she doing getting so suspicious?

 

XXX

 

“No, dad, I don’t have twenty new friends yet. Are you seriously setting a quota for me or something??” Nigeki said in disbelief. “Yes, I think goals are fine, but I’m out of the house for the first time in forever, do you really think that’s the way I should approaching this?”

He shifted the end of his phone away from his mouth so he could let out a sigh his father wouldn’t hear as another repetition of what they expected from him in exchange for letting him go to school off the family estate. As soon as he detected an opening, Nigeki took it.

“Any word on Mei and Satsuki?...Yes dad, I do think you’d tell me if you had anything to tell, and you should even call me in class if you have to. But I should really be asking anyway.”

Someone tapped him on the shoulder then. “Anyway, everything’s fine, dad. I’ll check in with you soon,” said Nigeki, then he hung up and turned around to find Kurumu’s smiling face looking back at him.

“Hi,” she said pleasantly.

“I remember you. You’re that girl who puts up with insane flutists.”

“That’s me!” she beamed.

“Well, nice to see you, but I’m supposed to meet somebody--” Nigeki started to say, but Kurumu stared right into his eyes, rubbed her abundant chest against his front with a giggle, and his vision seemed to swim. He staggered backward and fell on his butt, all strength leaving his body. Kurumu took his arm and hauled him to his feet, and all he knew to do was let her.

Kurumu wrapped her arms around his and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Let’s go somewhere and you can show me how cool you really are…” she purred.

“Okay,” Nigeki answered dully, and let her guide him away.

 

XXX

 

The day seemed warmer somehow as Moka walked beside Nigeki, searching for something to say but nothing came to mind. Somehow, she guessed, she’d thought things would come naturally after she’d managed to find someone interested in being friends at an actual monster school. But there she was, unable to break the silence with even another vampire.

“So, how you liking school so far?” Nigeki asked Moka with a smile.

“I’m liking it all right…but we talked that about at lunch, remember?” she reminded him.

Nigeki looked confused for a second but recovered. “Oh, yeah…! We did, didn’t we? Well…thinking about any clubs to join?”

“I’m not sure. I was going to wait until the drive next week,” Moka answered, chewing her lip thoughtfully.

He grinned. “Maybe we could join the same one. That’d be pretty cool, huh?”

Moka held her hands to her cheeks to hide her blush. “Yeah, that would be fun. Hey, do you think maybe I could have a sip from one of those blood bags you have sometime? I haven’t had any of the real thing in forever,” she looked at him, a sheepish little grin on her face.

He recoiled. “Blood bags?” he asked, looking at her aghast.

Moka clenched the strap of her bag. “You’re not Nigeki,” she said flatly.

Quickly he composed himself and stepped forward, smiling confidently. “Of course I am, what are you talking about?” He held out his hand to her. “Seriously, what’s the matter?”

But Moka slipped backward away from him. The wind picked up slightly and she caught his scent, a smell of thick, damp fog and wet leaves, not the faint coppery trace of blood that she remembered from her relatives.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, but Moka turned around and ran for all she was worth. “Hey, wait!” Nigeki called, but Moka ran back to where she’d last seen Nigeki, the real one, and then down the direction he’d done to make his phone call home.

Something was terribly wrong and she needed to know her lone friend was all right.

 

XXX

 

The gentle trilling of Nigeki’s flute filled the clearing behind the school while Kurumu smiled triumphantly and listened. She couldn’t name the tune but now he didn’t stop even when he tripped on a note. Her victorious grin slowly turned into a relaxed, comfortable smile. It wasn’t the skill he had, which obviously wasn’t much, it was the difference from most of the other boys she’d put under her spell who’d still tried to charm her with displays of their masculinity. Even that one who was so helpfully keeping Nigeki’s little airhead of a friend busy while Kurumu was finishing up putting him under her power.

She looked him in his vacant eyes and pushed another wave of her power into him, getting closer to turning him into a true admirer than just a puppet who’d repeat whatever she told him. There was a strange feeling as she fed the power into his heart, though…not the usual warmth of willingness of most guys who’d do anything to impress her. Instead it was a cool feeling of emptiness, and for just a second it felt like there was nothing there at all.

Kurumu dismissed the thought; he just tried to impress girls with something other than how tough he was, of course it’d feel different manipulating his heart. Nigeki hit another sour note but that time he lowered his flute and held his hands at his sides, staring blankly ahead of him.

“What’s wrong?” Kurumu asked. She walked up and looked him in the eyes to hit him with her supernatural charm again, but froze when she saw a shiny black shell forming against the skin of his neck.

“All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to dust,” Nigeki mumbled. Fingers of some black crystal-like substance were reaching out from the shell around his neck and stretching up around his jaw and cheeks. His eyes had gone a glowing yellow and as he reached out for Kurumu the same black crystal coating his neck and face was spreading itself over his hands and fingers too.

Kurumu screamed and jumped backward, huge bat-like wings exploding from her back while a black barbed tail unspooled from beneath her skirt. She sailed into the sky but the crystallized Nigeki jumped and crashed into her, then automatically wrapped his arms around her middle with a rock-like creak.

Suddenly her fingernails extended into foot-long claws that she raked across Nigeki’s back as they fell back toward earth. No blood came from his wounds, she only exposed more of the sheath of black crystal covering Nigeki’s body as she sliced his jacket to tatters. But his grip around her waist opened just enough for Kurumu to pull herself free before he plowed into the ground.

A group of students screamed in surprise at the loud crash of Nigeki’s impact, but in them Kurumu recognized a tall, dark-haired boy she’d already bent to her will, locked eyes with him and fired off a blast of charm at him. He reeled for a second as Kurumu screamed, “Help me! That thing’s after me!”

The boy bent over and made a hideous gargling noise as his skin was replaced by green and yellow scales. Webbing formed between his lengthening fingers and toes as a huge, gauzy red fin erupted from the back of his head, extending all the way down his back and matching the fins extending out from the sides of his face. He was a merman, and as Nigeki got up he eagerly tackled the crytalized vampire.

Nigeki weaved back and forth before lunging at the merman who suddenly leaned backward, thrusting out his torso which sprouted a mass of thick spikes. Nigeki’s body made a high-pitched whining sound as he struck them and slid off, leaving deep gouge marks where the spikes had touched his body’s crystal shell. Before he could recover the merman dove forward, planted his hands and let his momentum pull his legs forward and slam his feet into Nigeki’s chin, knocking him down.

As soon as Nigeki had hit the ground, though, his body seemed to _flow_ back up to his feet. The merman jumped high in the air and then started to spin in a drill-like motion as he came down in another kick toward Nigeki. But Nigeki held back one hand and the crystal coating it seemed to melt and ripple for a second before he swung his arm and pelted the merman with a barrage of black droplets like bullets, knocking him out of the air.

Before the merman even hit the ground Nigeki’s arms seemed to lose cohesion and shift into long whip-like shapes. He lashed them against the merman’s chest and knocked him back then swung his arms again and coiled them around the merman’s throat, mumbling the whole time, “All is ruin, all is waste, and will fall to the ground and crumble to dust.” The merman choked and thrashed, but managed to arch his back and suddenly flaps of skin under his ribs opened and spewed a cloud of noxious purple gas into Nigeki’s face. The crystal vampire gave a hollow shriek in surprise and staggered away.

Every instinct told Kurumu to fly away and find somewhere to wait out the end of Nigeki’s rampage, but instead her wings folded up and disappeared into her back. She watched as the pair of boys she’d bewitched battled it out not a hundred feet away, their true monstrous natures revealed by her attempts to control them. She knew she should run, but she couldn’t look away.

The merman reared back his head and then flung it forward, a whip-like tongue shooting from his mouth and wrapping around Nigeki’s neck. He leaned back and caught himself on his hands, forming his body into an arc and letting his momentum fling Nigeki to the ground headfirst. Without waiting for his opponent to recover the merman appeared to hold his breath for a second and the fin on his back flared to twice its length as he spewed an ultrasonic shriek at where Nigeki had landed. Dirt was blown ten feet high and Nigeki himself tumbled through the air end over end before landing in a heap.

But then he got back up, seeming not to have felt any of it.

Nigeki, or whatever he was now, dashed over and grabbed the merman by the arms, his stone-like lips pressed together so he was unfazed when the merman tried to release the gas from his chest into Nigeki’s face again. Then a row of spikes emerged from Nigeki’s forehead and he viciously headbutted the merman, knocking his head back violently, and then lifted and hurled him seventy feet to crash into the base of a tree hard enough to knock the entire thing over.

Then from out of the trees suddenly emerged a girl with a long trail of pink hair dancing behind her as she ran. Nigeki turned and looked at her in surprise, but that was nothing compared to the surprise when she ran straight up to him and threw her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest.

“There you are,” Moka gasped. “I was afraid I was too late…”

“Hey!” the merman managed to croak. “He’s a killer! Get away!”

But Moka didn’t move, even as Nigeki raised one arm over her, his fist clenched like a stony sledgehammer. He didn’t bring it down on top of her though, instead slowly lowering his arm to his side and standing motionless as Moka tightened her embrace.

“It’s okay, Nigeki, I’m here. You don’t have to deal with this by yourself,” she whispered.

Nigeki’s mouth dropped open and his eyes narrowed, seeming angry and confused at the same time. He balled his fists, but then cried, “HENSHIN!” The silver belt decorated by the red and black gem appeared around his waist, and with it the strange rippling red and black armor. His skull-like mask appeared behind him, split apart and then reformed around his head. Then he sank to his knees, Moka holding tight and falling to hers beside him.

A minute later a second Nigeki, not marked by black crystal, ran into sight but fell down panting for breath. His form bloated into that of a chubby raccoon a few feet tall, a tanuki. After another minute he distorted and reformed into a pudgy blond boy with thick glasses.

Kurumu walked numbly over to where the merman lay, and he groaned and sat up as she got near. “Hey Enrique…are you okay?” she asked, sounding totally drained.

“I think so…what in the hell is that guy??” he groaned.

He looked up as Moka stepped away from Nigeki and his mask split apart and vanished before his armor sprayed like blood in all directions, leaving an exhausted Nigeki clutching his throat and gasping for breath. Moka knelt by him again, then said something to him that Kurumu and the merman couldn’t hear. She slipped her arms around his shoulders again and smiled faintly.

Kurumu just watched them in silence.

 

XXX

 

The next day someone knocked on Nigeki’s door after class, and he cautiously opened the door and stopped when he saw Kurumu standing there, a large pink pouch clutched tightly in her hands.

“Hi,” she said simply.

Instinctively he looked away from her eyes. “Hi,” he replied, eying the window latch behind him.

“I’m not going to try that again,” she promised quickly. “Not after yesterday.”

After a second Nigeki opened the door and stepped back behind it. “Why don’t you come in?” he said, although the civility was obviously an effort judging from his tight tone of voice.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, but when he said nothing and didn’t move, Kurumu entered and looked around for a place to sit. When Nigeki sat down a cushion by the window she took the chair at his desk. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I wouldn’t have done that if I knew what would’ve happened.”

“No, of course you weren’t trying to do that,” Nigeki said calmly. “But do you mind telling me what you _were_ trying to do when you hypnotized me?”

Kurumu laughed limply. “I…I’m trying…I’m supposed to be looking for a husband while I’m here,” she sighed.

“So you’re mind-controlling boys to try to find the best husband, then.”

“Kind of,” Kurumu sighed again. “It’s a succubus thing…it’s really important we find our perfect partner.”

Nigeki nodded. “I knew a succubus when I was little. She’d hit my brain like that and make me play ‘wedding’ with her,” he explained.

“That’s cute,” Kurumu said, smilingly lightly.

Nigeki couldn’t help smiling a little bit at the memory himself. “She thought it would help me get over the darkness in me. It even worked for a little while.”

“What happened to her?” Kurumu asked.

“She moved away. When she did she talked about being really excited about finally getting to meet her sister, or someone like that, I think” Nigeki answered her. “She promised to get in touch but I didn’t hear from her again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kurumu said, then held out the pink bag. “Peace offering?”

Nigeki took it, opened the drawstring and peered inside, still half-expecting a trick of some kind. Instead, he saw…

“…cookies.”

“I know it’s not much after what happened after yesterday,” Kurumu said sheepishly.

Nigeki gingerly took one out and bit into it, then nodded slowly.

“It’s good.”

“It is?” Kurumu asked hopefully.

“Yeah…maybe you should lead with these instead of mind control next time,” he suggested.

Kurumu smiled with relief. “Maybe I will."


	3. Outsider

            On the screen in a darkened classroom a wiry man with a mop of brown hair and gigantic lips, wearing a leather jacket over a t-shirt with an image of a mouth sticking out its tongue, dancing around and singing something impossible to understand. More than a few students were whispering to each other about how ridiculous the video was, but it was just as well since Zarock-sensei was too engrossed in the video himself to pay much attention to them.

            Zarock was a man Nigeki Hitoribo found it hard to think of as an instructor. He had a gaunt, craggy face with a hawk like nose and small beady eyes that always seemed to be squinted in annoyed disbelief. His dark purple hair was formed into a sharp widow’s peak, and hung long in the back as if that disguised how it was receding in front.  

            But even if it wasn’t being taught by someone like Zarock, Nigeki had a hard time seeing the relevance of some band from halfway across the world that had gotten started back in the 60’s. This was supposed to be Introduction to Human Studies, wasn’t it? If Zarock enjoyed their music, fine, but weren’t the students supposed to be learning about human culture to blend in once they’d left school? Did this band have a Japanese following Nigeki never heard of?

Nigeki squirmed a little in his seat. Moka had been excused from this class thanks to the couple of years she’d already spent going to school in the human world, which unsettled Nigeki after he’d transformed into a Tear once and it’d hardly been a week into the school year. She’d been able to change him back, but what if it happened again and she was across campus? What if she couldn’t get to him before someone got hurt? Besides that, what if Kurumu and those two boys she’d gotten involved in her plans didn’t keep quiet about what they saw? And what would Nigeki’s family do if they found out what happened? They’d probably pull him out of school and make sure he never got near another living thing again…

            “Hitoribo!!”

            Everything suddenly stopped, and it was only a second later the lights flicked on, so suddenly it seemed almost violent, that Nigeki realized it was Zarock shouting at him and not the wailing from the video anymore. Zarock was glaring down at him, and asked, “Enjoying the lesson?”

            “Of course, Zarock-sensei. You’re really passionate about the…erm…errrrmmm…,” Nigeki said, blanking on the name of the band whose concert they’d been watching.

            “I’ll make it simpler for you,” said Zarock, and he pointed at the screen. “Just tell me who that is, think you can manage that?”

            “Errrrm!...Errr….Mi…Mik…Mike Jaguar!” Nigeki exclaimed, making Zarock clench his teeth in annoyance. The classroom erupted in laughter both at Nigeki’s ridiculous answer and Zarock’s obvious irritation at hearing it.

            But among his laughing classmates Nigeki noticed someone who seemed totally out of place; a girl who couldn’t possibly have been a day over ten and a half, her dark brown hair cut in a pageboy style. She wore a cape and tall pointed hat over her uniform, and as Nigeki looked at her, her eyes locked with his and for a second there was a mischievous twinkle, like maybe she thought she’d found a kindred spirit.

            The bell to dismiss class rang after another minute of the raucous and the students automatically picked up their bags and headed for the door. “Don’t forget about the club drive next week!” Zarock called out to the students as they gushed out of the room as fast as they could. “The Music Club’s always looking for new members! I’m looking at you, Hitoribo! You could learn a thing or two!”

            Nigeki grunted and tried to avoid looking at Zarock as he joined the flood of escaping students. He didn’t need to be reminded the years of practice were still yet to pay off. But once he was in the hall and out of sight of the teacher someone tugged on the tail of his jacket. He turned around and saw the girl in the pointy hat standing there.

            “That joke you pulled on Zarock was pretty good,” she giggled.

            “My mind was…on other things,” Nigeki answered.

            “Oh yeah?” she asked playfully. “Then watch this!” She jogged down the hall, stopping at the end, and from out of the depths of her cape she pulled out a white stick with a hollow pink heart at the end, but a glowing blue star that seemed to be made out of pure light inside it. She pointed it down the hall, muttered something under her breath and suddenly a huge gust of wind blasted down the hall. It ripped Nigeki’s bag from his hand and blew up the skirts of every girl in sight.

            A witch, huh? And one who enjoyed making a spectacle. He’d have to watch out for her.

            Nigeki raised his arm to block his eyes, trying to focus on just bending down and retrieving his bag. He didn’t feel like getting pummeled for having seen something he only saw because of someone else’s fault. When he stood up and dared to uncover his eyes, his view was entirely taken up by a blue-haired beauty in front of him.

            “There you are!” she said happily then leaned against him, her chest not so surreptitiously rubbing against him. “We’re still good, right? After, you know, the other day?”

            “Yes, Kurumu,” Nigeki replied.

            “I’m really, _really_ sorry…”

            “And I told you I forgive you,” Nigeki said and tried to walk away, only to bump into someone with an extremely dark look on their face.

            “ **You** certainly have a lot of nerve,” said a less-than-amused Moka Akashiya, “to get so friendly after what you **did**.”

            “She didn’t know--” Nigeki tried to protest.

            “Yes she did,” Moka corrected him. “You told her all about it after she hypnotized you.”

            Kurumu’s own expression became dark and threatening. “Yeah, you heard about that because you followed him and hid in the bushes like some kind of stalker. Some friend **you** are.”

            Nigeki slipped away from the two as quickly as he could as a crowd started to form around the two girls. He quickly snuck into the one place he was sure they’d never follow him.

            Safe in the men’s room for the moment Nigeki sighed in relief and opened his shirt wide enough to inspect the area over his heart. To his relief the dark spot had shrunk to a tiny black speck. Even with him starting to get nervous about being caught between two angry girls before he’d managed to slip away it didn’t look like his Tear state was in danger of flaring up again. Maybe he could do this after all. Hadn’t he only started to change when he’d gotten beaten up, and when his brain had basically been anesthetized by Kurumu’s powers?

            He could do this. He was new to this whole public school thing so there’d be some bumps, but he could keep the Tear under control. His family was researching these things around the clock, sooner or later they’d have a cure.

            They would, wouldn’t they?

 

XXX

 

            Another period and then class broke for lunch. Nigeki spotted Moka carrying a tray to a table and sat down with her, getting a smile from his fellow vampire. “You doing okay, Nigeki? No more…you know?” Moka asked gently.

            “No, I’m fine. The spot’s actually smaller than it was before that,” Nigeki answered. “Thanks. For…you know.”

            “Of course,” she said and smiled even wider. “Say, um…look, maybe this is kind of inappropriate, but do you think sometime maybe I could have a little drink from those blood bags you carry? It’s been forever since I had the real thing.”

            Nigeki blanched. “I…I don’t know, I’m--”

            “Hey,” said Kurumu as she came up from behind Nigeki and sat down next to him, then scooted her chair close enough her shoulder was rubbing against his.

            “What do **you** think you’re doing here?” Moka demanded.

            “I have as much right to be here as you do,” Kurumu retorted. “Besides, I’m trying to make things up to Nigeki for the other day.”

            He sighed. “Just don’t tell anybody or make it happen again and I forgive you.”

            “Hey, if I was going to be a bitch, I could be blackmailing you about that, right?” Kurumu pointed out. “You’d probably get kicked out of school if people found out about you having that other monster inside you, right? But hey, am I telling anybody?” She stopped to sip her drink. “No, I’m not. I told Enrique and Ryunosuke not to tell either.”

            “Told, or commanded?” Nigeki asked.

            “Told!” Kurumu said defensively.

            “Anyway!” Moka interrupted, seeing they weren’t going to get rid of Kurumu for the moment short of physically running her off, “Like I was asking, could I have a sip sometime, Nigeki? I haven’t had the real thing in forever.”

            “I’m supposed to save those,” he answered. “Changing puts a lot of stress on my body and I need to drink real blood to bounce back from it.”

            “So you guys are vampires?” Kurumu asked. “I always wondered, can you guys, like, drink each other’s blood if you need to?”

            Moka gasped and covered her mouth and Nigeki flinched in disgust at the idea. “No thanks,” Moka nearly gagged.

“What?” asked Kurumu. “Is it that bad?”

            “It’s like frenching your sister,” Nigeki told her.

            Kurumu looked at him incredulously. “And you know what it’s like to french your sister?”

            “Yes, I do as a matter of fact,” Nigeki answered her. “My sister wanted to know what kissing was like, so Lily did that mind-punch thing you succubi can do. I feel like she must’ve known it’d wear off right in the middle like that…”

            “Ohhhhhh…kay,” Kurumu said. “So how many sisters do you have?”

            “Two,” Nigeki replied, then added under his breath, “I hope.”

            “What do you mean, you hope?” Kurumu asked.

            “Nothing!” Nigeki said, waving it off. “What about you two? Any siblings?”

            “No,” Kurumu answered, looking a little crestfallen.

            “Three,” Moka answered, but when Nigeki and Kurumu gave her lightly questioning looks she added, “We…don’t really get along, though.”

            Nigeki turned slightly as he saw the young witch from earlier slide into a table by herself and drawing a number of wary looks from students sitting nearby. Except for a brown-haired boy with glasses who was trying to look unobtrusive as he crouched behind the students at a table a little ways behind the witch while he aimed a camera at her.

            Suddenly the witch locked eyes with Nigeki, raised her wand high before a bronze wash tub fell from the ceiling and landed on the boy with the camera. A few students at the tables around her got up and moved away after what she’d just done. She didn’t look bothered at all. In fact she shot Nigeki an impish grin.

            He had a feeling he’d be seeing more of her.

 

XXX

 

            He was right. In Introduction to Human Studies the next day Zarock-sensei was just launching into another lecture on the 60’s Western music scene when an air conditioning vent fell off its hinges and an avalanche of bullfrogs poured down on top of him. The frogs left slimy footprints wherever they landed and within seconds they were hopping all over room and students were slipping and running into each other as a green tide spread across the room. Nigeki himself gasped in surprise as two cold green amphibians slipped down the back of his shirt and yanked his shirt out of his pants to dump the frogs on the floor.

            And in the center of all the chaos laughing so hard tears streaked down her cheeks. Frogs that hopped at her bounced off some kind of invisible screen surrounding her body. Soon someone got the door open and the students spilled into the hallway.

            “Who did this?!” roared Zarock as he followed his students out of the classroom, slipping on frog slime and windmilling his long bony arms to keep his balance every step of the way. “WHO DID THIS?!?!” Zarock screamed before slipping again, losing his balance completely and falling on his butt.

            Teachers and misbehaving students opened the doors of their classrooms and peered into the hall as the frog invasion spread. They saw Zarock covered in slime, screaming like a maniac and unable to get to his feet, and the students watching the spectacle were soon filling the hall with laughter. Nigeki decided class was probably out and snuck away before things could get any crazier.

            By the time he’d made it out to the courtyard, though, he’d somehow picked up a passenger. The young witch was next to him, her laughing at what she’d done only slowing down because she was short on breath. “Um, hello?” he asked, not sure what else to say.

            “Wasn’t that the funniest thing you ever saw?” she wheezed, looking at him with a smiling that was almost blinding.

            “Dumping a ton of frogs in class?”

            “Yeah! He’s supposed to be teaching us, right? Why is he wasting our time with music our parents listened to?? It’s sooooo stupid!”

            “So you dropped frogs on him and ruined his class.”

            “Pffft! That class was pointless anyway, I just said that!” she said. “You think it’s stupid too! That’s why you gave him that answer yesterday!”

            “Hey!” Nigeki said defensively. “I looked it up later. I wasn’t that far off.”

            Her expression suddenly hardened. “You mean that wasn’t a joke you did?”

            “I’m not really that funny,” Nigeki shrugged, but then his face became a mask of confusion. “You thought I had it in for Zarock because I gave him a goofy answer? I mean, yeah, I agree he could be focusing on something more relevant. But…I don’t know. I wasn’t _trying_ to make fun of him.”

            “So you’re saying you’re really just that stupid?”

            “What??”

            “Are you just that dumb?” the witch demanded, an ugly sneer on her face now. “ ‘Mike Jaguar’?? Even I know that’s wrong!”

            “Now wait--” Nigeki tried to protest but the witch waved her wand and a wash tub drove Nigeki’s head into the ground hard enough to crack the sidewalk slab he was standing on. He pulled himself up after just a second but she was already gone.

 

XXX

 

            Nigeki didn’t show up for lunch that day, which unsettled Moka with what she’d heard about a biblical plague of frogs in his class from earlier in the day. She went looking for him, and finally found her fellow vampire out by the large trash bins behind the school, heaving a wash tub that been pulled almost in half into one of them and muttering angrily to himself. Probably about whatever had been the cause of the grapefruit-sized bump on his head.

            “Are you okay? What happened?” she asked, and Nigeki gasped in surprise and whipped around, grabbing her wrists suddenly. He froze a second later when he saw her face, with Moka blushing pink and looking breathless.

            “Sorry!” he said and let go of her wrists and jumped back a foot. “I had a run-in with a witch. Feeling kind of jumpy.”

            “You mean the thing with the frogs this morning?” Moka asked, almost innocently.

            He sighed. “Yeah. The thing with the frogs. There’s this witch in my class…she thought I was making fun of the teacher when I really just gave a dumb answer. When she found out it really was just a dumb answer she dropped that on my head and ran away. Do you know any witches at this school, Moka? Like, advanced placement witches?”

            Moka tilted her head a little at the strange way he put it. “Advanced placement witches?”

            Nigeki sighed. “I mean like young witches. She barely looks ten.”

            “Oh! Oh…well, hmmm, yeah, I have heard about one girl like that,” Moka answered. “There is this one girl who’s supposed to be in our year because she skipped a few grades, Yukari Sendou. I think I heard something about her being a witch. I haven’t met her, though.”

            “I see.”

            She put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, Nigeki, are you okay? If you’re nervous about somebody sneaking up on you, we should be careful.”

            “I’m not going to change into a monster again, Moka, I’m just kind of annoyed,” Nigeki replied, then stopped as he realized what he’d said. “I mean, a worse monster. An evil monster…you know what I mean. Shit, you were there…”

            Moka laughed lightly. “I know what you mean. We should get back or we’ll be late.”

            “Yeah,” Nigeki smiled at her. “Let’s go.” As they walked he placed a hand over his heart, just to check for that familiar cool, hard feeling of a Tear shell. Even after his encounter with Yukari, it was still gone. Maybe this would work out after all.

            “Nigeki,” Moka said suddenly. “What do you think about witches?”

            “Hmmm? Well, that was the first one I met. But, yeah, I know about a lot of monsters not considering them much different from humans. I’m not sure if that’s big a difference myself.”

            “But…do you think they don’t belong here?” Moka pressed.

            “Well…shit. I think non-humans have a lot of human enemies, witches too. But I’m a vampire, Moka. I’m supposed to be one of the worst kinds of monsters there is, and I’m trying to avoid being like that so an even worse monster inside me doesn’t get out. I don’t know, isn’t that the kind of thing really makes a monster or not? Instead of claws and breaking rocks with your bare hands.”

             Moka smiled at him. Proudly, he thought. “I do. Thank you.”

            “It’s what we’re all here to learn, isn’t it?”

 

XXX

 

            The next day Nigeki was cautious about going Introduction to Human Studies. He’d seen Zarock-sensei on the way to class, looking even angrier than usual after what had happened the day before, and made sure to stay out of the teacher’s sight. He was surprised to see Zarock carrying a guitar case in one hand, though. Was he planning to let them see his own musical talents today…?

            He was almost to class before he heard someone yell, “Unforgivable!” He thought about turning around and going to class the long way when a bright green cloud exploded out of the hallway ahead, and he froze as he realized it was a giant swarm of grasshoppers. They spread down the hall like a wave, knocking Nigeki and any other student slow enough to be in their way to the floor, buzzing around them angrily. Nigeki swatted at them with his hands even knowing it was useless, until after a minute the insect cloud buzzed out of sight and he sat up, uniform chewed and tattered.

Sighing as he was already sure what was going on, Nigeki walked toward the source of the shouting and sighed as his fears were confirmed.

            The young witch was leaning back against a wall, surrounded by two burly boys. One of them, a craggy-faced black-haired specimen who looked to be in charge, had a green band around one arm signifying the position of class president. There was also a hole in the ceiling the size and shape of the metal wash tub resting on top of the head of another boy who lay flat on the floor.

            “What makes you think you can get away with these stupid jokes and assaulting other students?!” the president demanded. “You’re here to learn how to exist peacefully and avoid attracting attention! Or did you somehow miss that when you jumped all those grades?!!”

            Yukari stuck her tongue out and pulled down her bottom eyelids with her fingers. “It’s high school!” she fired right back. “Everybody plays pranks! Is everyone at this school some kind of loser or what?!”

            “Why you miserable little--” he growled and lunged at her, but another girl jumped in the way, arms splayed defensively.

            “Wait just a minute!” yelled Moka. “What happened to existing peacefully?!”

            “Exactly! What happened to it? Some uppity little _witch_ thought she was above it by flooding a classroom with frogs! What’s she even doing here at a _monster_ school?” He moved to slap Moka aside and she raised her arms to block his swing when someone grabbed him from behind before he could attack.

            “Boy I’m glad to have somebody like you representing us,” Nigeki asked, then threw him against the other wall. The boy’s friend tackled Nigeki to the floor and swung a fist at face, but Nigeki grabbed his wrist. Then he punched Nigeki in the face with his other fist. For just a second Nigeki’s eyes flashed yellow but he clenched his teeth and fought it down.

            Moka screamed and tried to run forward and help but the class president shouldered her aside, grinning sadistically. On the floor Nigeki grabbed his opponent’s head and slammed it down against his own in an awkward headbutt, dazing the boy long enough for Nigeki to get out from under him. The two glared at each other, fists clenched. Students were starting to gather around to watch as it looked like a fistfight was about to break out.

            “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?!” screamed a shrill voice, and an enraged Zarock charged up. Everything stopped. “What’s this? Fighting in the halls, are you, Hitoribo?”

            The boy he’d been grappling with pointed at Yukari. “She started it, sir!  Assaulted a upperclassmen!” he said, indicating the class president with his other hand.

            “He tried to bite me!” Yukari retorted.

            “After you mouthed off about being so much smarter than everyone else at this school.”

            “Get to class! You too, Wanibuchi!” Zarock barked at the class president, then set an angry glare on Yukari and Nigeki. “You too! And I’ll see you both after class!”

            As the disappointed crowd dispersed, Yukari cast a long, unsure look over her shoulder at the pair of vampires who’d come to her rescue.

 

XXX

 

            The rest of the day dragged on as Nigeki wondered what Zarock would have in mind for punishment detail. Yukari kept looking over at him during class, but with that same unsure expression rather than the annoyance he was expecting.

            They met Zarock in the hall where the fight had been that morning, and it was still a scene of devastation with cracked windows, torn wallpaper and splatters of dried bug guts on every surface. Zarock had mops and buckets for them, but Nigeki noticed he also had that guitar case from this morning.

            “Clean this mess up,” Zarock grunted. “I’ll be back in a while to see how you’re doing. And don’t even think about leaving until this place is _spotless_.” Then he left, taking the guitar case with him.

            Yukari and Nigeki exchanged another glance, then picked up their mops. Nigeki went outside to fill the buckets, and he’d barely even come back inside before soap dumped itself into one bucket and Yukari’s mop floated through the air, soaked its tip in the soapy bucket and started to scrub up the hallway by itself. Not to Nigeki’s surprise, Yukari was standing nearby grinning as she directed the mop up and down the hall at blinding speed with her wand.

            “I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Nigeki said a little apprehensively.

            “Why not?” she asked. “I didn’t do anything. So I’m using magic.”

            Nigeki set down his own mop, soaked the end and started scrubbing at squashed grasshopper on the other side. “Oh yeah?” he asked.

            “I don’t have to tell you anything,” Yukari said.

            “I got punched in the face for you,” Nigeki reminded her. “That must be worth something.”

            “It doesn’t still hurt does it?”

            “A little,” Nigeki said, then stopped as he realized it hadn’t been Yukari who’d asked. He looked up to see Moka standing there, and she gingerly touched at the bruise forming around one of his eyes. “What are you doing here, Moka?”

            “Making sure you’re okay. And I thought maybe I’d help if you needed it,” she said and gave Nigeki such a sweet smile he could almost feel cavities forming in his mouth from looking at her.

            “I appreciate it, but I think Zarock-sensei brought a machine gun or something in case he catches us slacking off.”

            “A machine gun?!” Moka gasped.

            “No! Not really! But we still shouldn’t be slacking off and getting our friends to help probably still counts…”

            Moka heaved a sigh of relief. “I was afraid you were serious for a second,” she said, then looked Nigeki in the face, and both chortled. After a second they noticed Yukari staring.

            “What is with you two?”

            Nigeki sighed and started pushing his mop up the floor. “Yukari…that is your name, right? Can I ask why you and those guys from this morning were getting into it in the halls? What started all that?”

            Yukari lowered her arms and looked away. The mop she’d been controlling fell on the floor with a clatter. It wasn’t until a minute later that she answered. “They asked me why I was showing off I’m a witch when we’re supposed to hide what we are.” She waved her wand up to her hat and back down.

            “Uh-huh?” Nigeki prompted.

            “And I don’t want to hide what I am. You know how many grades I got to skip? This is who I am! I’m proud of it!” Yukari exclaimed. “There were people acting like that on the first day!”

            “I bet you showed off your magic with whoever gave you shit then, right?” Nigeki asked. “What happened after that? Did it happen again? Did you just start to like using your magic to show what you could do?”

            “So what?! Everyone acts like I’m a freak even here because I’m not a real monster! I can do things humans can’t, I know things humans don’t! What’s the difference?!”

            “Can I ask one thing?” asked Nigeki, who then asked another thing. “What about the thing with the wind? I didn’t give you shit about being a witch.”

            “That was when I thought you were cool,” Yukari answered.  
            “He’s cool!” Moka immediately leaped to her friend’s defense, and Nigeki flinched back, a huge sweatdrop forming on the back of his head. “Sorry…too much?” she asked Nigeki.

            Yukari stared at them for a long time before speaking again. “Why do you two even care?” she finally asked them. “You’re not witches too, are you?”

            “No, we’re not,” Moka replied with a smile. “At least, I don’t think he is.” Nigeki grunted and sweatdropped again. “But we do know what it’s like to be alone in a weird place. I was in a _human_ school for years before I came here. And this is the first time Nigeki’s even been to a school with other kids his age.”

            Yukari knitted her brow. “Really? Why?”

            Nigeki nodded and said, “Honestly, I was more alone at home than I am here. My mom hates me and my oldest brother hates me even more because of it. My dad thought it’d be best if I go somewhere else for a while that has kids my own age and make some friends, so he can focus on a really big project without us all fighting and distracting him from his work.”

Yukari raised her wand and the mop started scrubbing the hall by itself again. No one said a word.

“Hard at work, huh?” said a derisive voice, and at the end of the hall stood Zarock, guitar case in hand.

“Zarock-sensei,” Nigeki said, rolling around something appropriate to explain what was going on to a teacher who was already fed up with them.

“Not only do you wreck this place and not clean it up like you’re told, you cheat with bloody _magic!_ ,” Zarock pointed at them accusingly.

“It’s what I _am_!” Yukari protested. “I’m not any worse because my powers come from something I learned instead of something I’m born with!”

“ **I DON’T CARE!!** ” Zarock yelled. “Here I am, greatest of my kind among anything I’ve ever attempted, and reduced to ‘paying off my debt to supernatural society’ putting up with a bunch of obnoxious brats with no work ethic at all! I fought and clawed to get to the top, sacrificed everyone to join this world, gain power!

“And what do I have to show for it?!” he ranted on, sounding as if anger he’d been bottling up for years was finally boiling over. “I’ve got _THIS! YOU!!_ A bunch of punkass monster kids who think _they’re_ special, who think _they_ have it all figured out! _I’ve_ played in the big leagues, you worthless kids! _You_ wouldn’t last two minutes!”

“Run,” Nigeki whispered to the others, who were already inching away from their crazed teacher, but then he opened the guitar case.

            Reverently he pulled out a flying v guitar with the design of the English flag on the body and a cackling purple-haired zombie head atop the neck. “They called me a Lord once, maybe now they’ll call me that again! Lord Raptor!” He strummed the guitar once, and the entire bottom floor of the school building screamed in terror. Windows exploded, classroom doors were blown off their hinges, and Nigeki, Moka and Yukari were sent tumbling through the air landing in a sprawl against the far wall.

            When the sound died down again Zarock was no longer in sight. Instead of a gaunt-looking human man there was only an emaciated blue zombie strumming his guitar in the hall. He had several stalks of purple hair coming out the top of his face, which was little more than a skull covered by skin. Long yellow _fangs_ emerged from his chest just below his pectoral muscles, like the skeletal yellow fingers on each hand. Engorged vertebrae like the ends of steel girders stuck out in a row down his back. His only clothes consisted of leather gloves with silvery metal studs over the knuckles matching the studded leather codpiece on the front of ragged blue pants, with a Union Jack emblem and a spiked metal shin guard on one leg.

            “ **Get ready to dance til you drop!** ” Lord Raptor screamed, a foot-long tongue wagging out of his mouth while he violently strummed his guitar, somehow the booming of a dozen amps echoing his notes. Then he ran at them, his bony legs taking disturbingly long, gangly steps that crunched the tile each time his feet hit the ground. Yukari screamed in fright and waved her wand, sending a wash tub flying down the hall at Raptor who spin-kicked it through a window without breaking his stride.

            The trio of students ran down the hall and around a corner as Lord Raptor raked his bony fingertips across his guitar strings and a blast of sound ripped down the hall and blew a hole in the wall.

            “I don’t think we can get away from him,” Moka panted, and then grabbed Nigeki’s wrist.

            “Wait, what are you doing??” he gasped.

            “If you don’t have to fight, you don’t have to worry about changing again! Let me do it!”

            “No…!” Nigeki protested, but it was too late. His palm touched the Rosario on her neck, a feeling of cold raced through their bodies and for a second his belt with the Bloodstone mounted in the center could be seen as the objects’ contrary powers intermingled, then there was an explosion that flung them away from each other.

            The Moka who stood up wasn’t the one who’d been so eager to take Nigeki’s hand a second before. The sky seemed darker and the wind colder as she took off at a run in Raptor’s direction. “Oowww!” he wailed as he saw her coming. “Hey baby, new hair dye? I’m diggin’ it!”

            “You disgusting, lowly zombie, time for you to learn your--”

            “La Malta, come out and plaaaaaayayay!” Raptor called and suddenly something sprang up from the ground right underneath Moka. A frog-like creature with spindly limbs, giant lips and a single eye lunged up and swallowed Moka whole, then dove back into the ground and vanished from sight.

            “Moka!” Nigeki yelled, then clenched his fists. Raptor rapidly strummed his guitar and the neck transformed into a giant chainsaw, and he rushed at Nigeki and Yukari waving the saw in front of him. The young witch waved her wand and a flurry of cards shot at Raptor, but he only whooped and slashed through them with his saw, not even seeming to notice the few that lodged in his skin. Nigeki shoved Yukari out of the crazed zombie’s path and jumped the other way but the chainsaw still raked across his back.

            Nigeki flinched and his eyes flashed yellow. Icy fear clenched his stomach at this maniac with a giant chainsaw, and he knew there was no other choice. He had no combat training, no weapons or powers he knew how to use against a powerful and maniacal enemy like Lord Raptor. Except one. Better that than take another, more serious wound, give the Tear the chance to awaken…

            “ **Henshin!** ” His belt appeared and the Bloodstone shone with a forbidding crimson light as its essence crawled over Nigeki’s body. His skull-mask split apart and reformed around his head as the darker part of his vampire nature grew stronger, and it felt like Nigeki was drifting away to a corner of his mind and something else assuming control of his body. He was filled with the urge to fight. To crush those foolish enough to challenge his dominance.

He wasn’t the unassuming Nigeki Hitoribo anymore. Now, he was only Bloodstone.

            Raptor’s chainsaw buzzed angrily as it skimmed the top edge of Bloodstone’s mask, and he whipped around and grabbed the saw’s front bar before Raptor could bury it in his chest. Suddenly Bloodstone shoved the weapon aside, jumped high and slammed his heel into Raptor’s face. The zombie grunted loud in surprise but landed in a somersault, rolled until his feet were on the ground again and unfolded himself into a standing position.

            “Ooooh! Look at ‘im, finks ‘e’s a big, scary _Kamen Rider_ wiv ‘is nice fancy suit and ‘is big shiny belt!” Raptor jeered, hopping back and forth and picking at his guitar strings. “Oh no, please don’t ‘urt me, Mister Rider!”

            Bloodstone said nothing, just watching his erratic enemy for an opening or a sign of an incoming attack. Let this fool be the one to fill the air with pointless talking, and think he could distract a being meant only for conquest.

            “ **Blood Riser** ,” said Bloodstone’s belt and he slammed one fist against the ground. Red power whipped through the dirt and exploded in a giant red fountain under Raptor, but he curled himself into a ball and stuck out his long legs behind him and pushed himself off the side of the school building with all his undead strength. As he came shooting at Bloodstone a bony spike four feet long extended from his elbow and gouged into Bloodstone’s chest.

            With quivering hands Bloodstone reached out and grabbed Raptor by the neck. Paying no attention to the gaping wound in his chest, Bloodstone smashed Raptor face-first into the ground, but the zombie again recovered quickly and somersaulted away from him.

            Bloodstone charged after him when Raptor came charging right back, spinning like a tornado and crackling with giant bolts of electricity. Raptor crashed into Bloodstone laughing like a lunatic the whole time.

“Feel it baby!! **FEEL IT**!!” he taunted as his electricity lanced through Bloodstone’s body and battered by Raptor’s flailing arms and the spikes on his belt.

Then there was a *CLANG* that echoed throughout the clearing as a heavy metal wash tub bounced off Raptor’s head. Dazed, he stopped spinning against Bloodstone and fell. That wall the opening he needed.

Bloodstone crouched, jumped high enough he cleared the tree canopy and came down with his booted foot aimed at Raptor’s back. He landed with a horrific crunch that made Yukari flinch away from the battle. Raptor yelled in pain, and even as he did Bloodstone picked him up and hurled him through the treetops. When he crashed into a tree trunk some eight hundred feet away, almost breaking it in half, Raptor was able to shakily climb to his feet.

But as soon as he had he could hear deep, angry breathing coming closer and the bright yellow eyes of his opponent shining through the trees. There was a flash of light, a metallic keening sound and a tree trunk toppled over, almost landing on top of Raptor. Desperately the zombie readied his guitar and strummed it with all the force he could pack into one attack, but Bloodstone braced himself, crossing his arms in front of his face as the sonic wave washed over him, pushing him back one inch, then two…then Raptor’s attack was spent. Bloodstone uncrossed his arms and came leaping at the zombie, the gleaming blade on one elbow fully extended to slice him straight to the grave. Again.

            Raptor screamed in terror, his long tongue wagging, and turned and sprinted away through the trees with his gangly stride, and Bloodstone’s attack only sliced through empty air.

            Sucking in a deep breath, Bloodstone’s armor flew off him in a crimson spray. His mask split apart and disappeared along with his belt. Restored to whatever passed for normal, Nigeki sank to his knees and panted heavily. Thanks to his magnified urges he’d come so close to annihilating his opponent…did he have that right, even with someone as unhinged as Lord Raptor?

            He turned and started back to school, but he’d hardly gone fifteen steps when he saw Yukari standing in his path.

            “That was so cool,” she whispered.

            Nigeki sighed. “If you say so…but what happened to Moka?”

            He heard a whistling sound and jumped toward Yukari, moving himself between Yukari and whatever was incoming, but it landed a few feet away with a splat and didn’t move. In the near-darkness it took him a few seconds to recognize the strange creature that had swallowed Moka and disappeared, a large black X replacing the iris in its single eye. A second later Moka, uniform torn and covered in splotches of transparent goo, strode through the trees and looked down at the fallen creature with understandable disgust.

            “Last time these undead freaks get ideas above their station,” Moka assured them.

            “I hope it’s a long time before anybody tries to pick a fight with us again, period,” Nigeki sighed and leaned against a tree.

 

XXX

 

             Raptor was still barreling through the woods, his long heaving, but he stopped dead in his taloned tracks when he saw someone ahead of him. It wasn’t Bloodstone, it was a man in white robes and hood, and Raptor had a feeling he was in even more trouble.

            “I’m very disappointed,” the hooded figure said in a hollow voice. “You said you looking for a fresh start, turning your back on your past…yet you hid _this_ from me, Zarock.”

            The robed figure easily plucked the guitar from Raptor’s hands, and snapped the neck in two while reaching out for Raptor’s face with his other hand, mesmerizing light flowing from his palm.

            “Keeping deadly weapons like this is hardly the act of a repentant man, now is it? Perhaps it’s time for us to have another talk,” he said, then grabbed Raptor’s skeletal face, and everything went white.

 

XXX

 

            Nigeki almost didn’t go to Introduction to Human Studies the next day, expecting hell from Zarock. But to his surprise the teacher was a stooped old man with a thick white mustache who squinted at everything even though he wore glasses so thick they looked like they were one second away from dropping off the end of his nose.

            Instead of 60’s rock bands he gave them a lecture on ways to identify monster hunters and tell the dangerous ones apart from the amateurs. Not really the kind of thing the class was supposed to be about, but applicable enough until a new, less homicidal teacher was found, Nigeki guessed.

            He’d heard a lot of it from his tutors as a kid, though, being one of the most despised species of monster, and slowly tuned out as the lecture went on. As he did he noticed Yukari didn’t seem to be paying much attention either, and was smiling faintly in his direction with a distant look in her eyes.

            After class ended Nigeki wandered out with the rest of the students, wondering faintly what had happened to Zarock. He was almost bowled over when a pink-haired girl ran up to him at top speed, looked up to apologize and then stopped as she recognized him.

            “Moka! What are you in such a hurry for??” he asked. “Is Zarock back?”

            “No,” she panted. “Just wanted to make sure you were still okay after yesterday, even after you had to change again.”

            “Changing makes it so the bad part of me doesn’t come out, remember?”

            “It’s not part of you, I don’t believe that. It’s something in you that doesn’t belong.”

            “If getting rid of it was as simple as that we’d have found a way already,” Nigeki replied, but Moka’s smile didn’t dim. He wondered if anything could make it.

            “Smile, smile,” she said, pulling his mouth out into an awkward smile. “That’s what you need to do to stay better!”

            A soft giggle interrupted them, and they looked over to see Yukari looking at the two of them, blushing and cupping her cheeks with her hands. “I don’t believe it,” she mumbled.

            “What?” asked Nigeki.

            “Are you two a couple or something??” she asked.

            Moka frowned and grabbed Nigeki’s arm with both of hers. “Yes,” she answered for him.

            “We are?”

            “Great!” Yukari squealed and flung her arms around Nigeki’s waist.

            “Great?” he asked, then his jaw hit the floor. “Wait, what do you mean ‘ **great** ’??”


	4. Splashed

            As a new day dawned on Youkai Academy students were already setting up canopies, tables and signs outside the main building. It was the day of the school’s club drive where they would be trying to attract first-year students into joining their fields of interest.

            In the Headmaster’s private office, a different recruitment was already taking place.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” he said in a hollow voice as he shut the curtains to make sure no-one got any idea of what going on. “I understand I’m asking you to give up on quite a bit to be here.”

“I’ve got friends I’m lying to ‘be here’,” the woman who was his guest replied. “People I made a commitment to.”

“I have no intention of demeaning your bandmates, but much greater things are in store, Felicia,” the Headmaster replied.

“ANM48’s the most popular band in the world right now, thank you very much,” she informed him.

He nodded. “And a daring experiment in monster camouflage, I’m more than willing to admit,” the Headmaster said in recognition of her status. “But I repeat my claim that alarming things are taking form, and we need to be ready.”

“Whoa, whoa…like, Pyron big?”

Again he nodded in reply. “Yes, and the sooner preparations can be made the better. Hence my request to you. One of my new students brought a powerful secret to this school no-one thought to bring to my attention before he entered this school, but it could make him an extremely valuable agent all the same.

“There is a darkness inside him,” the Headmaster went on, “however, and while from the sound of things he’s coping with it better here than he did among his family, I need to be sure. I need someone reliable--”

            She held up one furryy paw. “There _is_ Jon.”

            “Ahem! As I was saying, I need someone reliable, _and_ someone a teenage boy won’t mind being around on a regular basis keeping an eye on him.”

            “So you _do_ only want me around for my good looks.”

            He smiled faintly. “I need someone who he’d allow to guide him, someone he’d be willing to trust. But most importantly, someone _I’m_ willing to trust.”

            Silence filled the room. After a few minutes of thought, Felicia said, “You got any pictures of this baby you need me sitting?”

 

XXX

 

            As soon as Nigeki answered his door he found a three-foot-tall package wrapped with pink bow pushed into his arms. “Surprise!” said the girl presenting it to him and darting into his room before she could be stopped.

            “Ggghkk…Hi, Kurumu. What’s this?”

            “Open it and find out, silly!” she grinned.

            Eying the giant package a little uncertainly, Nigeki brought it over to his desk, took off the ribbon and the paper it was wrapped in and the white cardboard box inside off the bottom.

            “It’s a…cake,” Nigeki stated, and indeed it was. It was three layers high, covered in carefully-applied marble frosting. A ring of strawberries surrounded the circumference of the top layer, and written in chocolate icing inside them were the words “Congratulations on Finding the Perfect Club!”

            “Wow,” he said, and Kurumu stifled a pleased giggle. “It’s awesome, but isn’t it—”

            “I know, it’s still a little early, but I wanted to show you right away. And I thought maybe we could go looking together…it’d be more fun with a friend, right?” Kurumu said, looking at him with a hopeful smile.

            Nigeki turned away and pretended to be studying the cake. It was thanks to Kurumu trying to bend him to her will that he’d had a Tear attack, one of the worst he’d ever had, but then again she hadn’t known that would happen. His family was still trying to gather enough proof to convince the rest of the monster world such a thing existed. Plus she had released the boys she’d already enchanted, hadn’t she?

            And he was supposed to be making friend and having a good time to keep his Tear aspect from surfacing again. That was why he’d been sent to school, because while his family could keep an eye on him at home, actual companionship was something it was increasingly harder for him to get there. Nigeki had to be careful, of course, but he wasn’t going to be building a circle of friends if he avoided everyone. Besides, it was high school; weren’t they supposed to make some stupid mistakes when they first started testing their independence?

            “Sure,” he said with a smile. “Let’s go.”

            “Great!!” Kurumu said and grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the room almost at a run. He barely had time to shut the door behind him before they left the floor entirely.

            A few minutes later Moka came by and knocked timidly on Nigeki’s door.

 

XXX

 

            “What about that?!” Kurumu pointed as they walked past the colorful displays set up at the Flower Arrangement Club’s both.

            “I don’t really think that’s the perfect club for me…,” Nigeki said hesitantly.

            “I was just kidding. You need to learn to tell when somebody’s making a joke.”

            They passed another both that had “Kendo Club” written on a crude wooden sign hammered into the grass. A pair of boys were taking turns whacking each other with bokken while a stocky man observed their sparring with an unmoving frown on his face.

“You call that an overhead strike?!” he barked even as his pupil’s imitation weapon made a solid *thwack* against the other’s shoulder. “And you! Tighten up that defense! We’re supposed to be impressing the first-years!”

            “Y-yes Bishamon-sama!” the boy stammered, his and his partner’s practice swords clacking together under their instructor’s watchful eye.

            Next they passed a booth with a banner overhead reading “ANIMATION APPRECATION CLUB” with a picture of a purple-haired catgirl making the peace sign and a pair of hearts floating off of her face. The same one from the magical girl show playing on the screen at the moment inside, looked like. The chubby science teacher and her dancing robot doll were standing inside helping to draw in perspective members, and a sizable crowd was forming around the booth. As they went by, though, Nigeki swore the teacher fixed him with a probing gaze for a second that didn’t make him think she wanted him for the club.

            “Say,” Nigeki pointed with his free hand, “Isn’t that your, uh…friend from before?” Standing under a banner reading “Drama Club” was a pudgy blond boy in red tunic and tights. He looked just like the human form Kurumu’s tanuki friend had assumed after the dust had settled that day Nigeki had changed into a Tear. But standing next to him was a tall, willowy girl in a yellow dress, her golden-blonde hair done up into buns behind her ears.

            He fell to one knee as they acted out a scene, and she placed a hand over her chest and turned away in feigned embarrassment. He rose to his feet, and she rushed into his arms and planted a hard, very real kiss on his lips, holding it for a minute until they stepped back, panting, smiling and red in the cheeks

            “Yeah, that’s him,” Kurumu confirmed, brow knitted in disbelief. “He bounced back fast…”

            “No kidding. She’s almost as pretty as you,” Nigeki said without thinking.

            “What did you say??” Kurumu demanded. “She’s almost as pretty as me?”

            “…yeah?”

            She smiled and clenched his arm, chest rubbing against it. Nigeki’s cheeks flared red and he tried to gently pull away but Kurumu only clung to him harder. “That’s what I thought,” she said, and practically dragged Nigeki behind her as she went down the avenue. He failed to see Moka coming up behind them, but Kurumu hadn’t…

            They sped past the Spirit Photography Club, War Game Club, Trampoline Club, Archeology Club, Stand-Up Comedy Club…finally Kurumu stopped and Nigeki managed to pull himself free of her grip and try to pick out the real world from the blur of colors and sounds they’d just been passing through. “What about that one?” Kurumu asked excitedly, and Nigeki saw she was pointing at the school pool.

            A bright yellow banner reading “Swimming Club” hung off the chainlink fence around the pool, and underneath were a group of shapely girls in bikinis waving and smiling at passersby. By this point Nigeki had to stand on his tiptoes to know any of it, as the Swimming Club had attracted a bigger crowd than any other club whose booth he could see.

Some of the girls in the club were leading a larger procession of drooling first-year students already in their swim trunks up to the pool. Near the back of the line Nigeki saw someone he dimly recognized as the young merman who’d made a valiant effort to fight him off when he’d changed into a Tear.

            “Eeeehhh…I’m going to have to pass,” Nigeki said.

            Kurumu tilted her head. “Seriously? You can’t swim, or something?”

            “Well, not can’t, I _can’t_. You’ve heard about vampires and how they can’t cross running water, right?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, that’s true, but only if we touch it. Then it really messes us up. I am not going near that pool,” Nigeki explained.

            Kurumu stared at him with slightly amused disbelief. “Seriously? Is that really a thing?”

            “Yes it is. I’ve got a PE swimming exemption in my room if you want to see it.”

            She nodded but her amusement had turned into disappointment, then a sly smirk appeared on her face. “You asking me back to your room, then?”

            A huge sweatdrop formed on Nigeki’s head. “You enjoy doing that, don’t you?” he asked. Kurumu winked, stuck out her tongue and made the “peace” sign with her fingers in reply. She stopped and peered over his shoulder, then grabbed Nigeki by the arm again.

            “Well, let’s go look over here, then!” she said.

            “Oh, Moka-chan! Thinking about joining the Cooking Club?” asked a voice a second after Kurumu dragged Nigeki past a club’s booth. It was motherly woman with luxurious white hair and wearing a frilly pink apron over a purple dress. A pair of girls in aprons as well walked up from the direction of the school building, carrying an oven-fresh cake in their hands that they set out on the counter in front of their club booth.

            “Moka??” Nigeki said pulled away from Kurumu to look behind him. Indeed there was Moka, who stopped to catch her breath.

“Not right now Mrs. Dreemurr, I’m trying to catch up to that friend I was worried about before,” she answered. Kurumu was glaring at the vampiress so hard it seemed a wonder Moka didn’t explode into flames. Maybe it was because Moka was glaring back at Kurumu just as hard, and Nigeki stepped out from between them out of self-preservation instinct.

            “What do you think you’re doing here?” Kurumu asked coldly.

            “I _think_ I’m trying to find my best friend so we can go looking at clubs together,” Moka replied, icicles almost forming in the air as she spoke. “But _some_ one seems to think only she gets to do that.”

            “Girls--” Nigeki tried to intervene.

            “QUIET!!” they both yelled. He backed off even farther. Mrs. Dreemurr nodded at him for making a wise decision. He’d been warned about every method every monster hunter humanity had come up with to exterminate him and his kind, but ticked off girls were their own special kind of scary.

            “There you are!” he heard a girl call out, and Yukari came up to Nigeki with a smile on her face. It quickly faded when she saw the sparks flying between Kurumu and Moka. “What’s going on?”

            “I really wish I knew,” Nigeki said. Kurumu had grabbed Moka’s hair and tripped her to the ground without much resistance as this Moka was no fighter. It started to feel like an icy knot was forming in Nigeki’s stomach; a one-sided catfight was breaking out between two people he was starting to consider friends, and here he was supposed to be keeping a low profile and staying out of trouble.

            Yukari raised her wand high before swinging it down and pointing it straight at Kurumu, who was knocked flat by a wash tub landing on her head. Nigeki sighed and rubbed his forehead. Was this really how it was going to be? Him sent to break out of his shell and do things with people his own age, but never get involved when things got uncomfortable?

            He’d get the chance to find out. At that moment a boy’s scream of alarm cut the air.

 

XXX

 

            Enrique burst out of his human disguise, scales forming and fins flaring down his back. The girl behind him dove underwater and he followed after, pursuing her across the pool with an agility rivalling her own. Suddenly she turned and swam past his back, slapping him in the face with her fishtail as she went by, grinning, if indeed that was the word, with that huge, shark-like mouth.

            Great, mermaids. If it wasn’t bad enough he always needed to explain the difference between the difference between his species and theirs, even among other monsters, mermaids always looked down on his kind. After all, they always said, whose species was only just now crawling back from the edge of extinction?

            It had been the smell that had given her away, the soft tinge of salt water neither of their kinds could hide from someone else from the bottom of the sea. Of course, when he spotted her over his shoulder with a mouth wide enough to swallow a manhole cover, that had been a pretty good indicator of trouble too…

            She swam at him again like a torpedo, but Enrique sucked in deeply, filled his body up with energy, and then expelled in a deafening ultrasonic blast that hit the attacking mermaid and blew her end over end until she broke the surface of the pool.

            He shot out of the pool like a missile, somersaulted six times in the air before he came down in the shallow end and went into a fighting stance. In the middle of the pool a few boys had already keeled over, drained of their vital essence by a circle of mermaids.

            Not the enticing creatures of popular culture, but half-fish with wicked talon-like fingernails and impossibly wide mouths with two rows of hook-shaped teeth. They were eying the merman hungrily now that the other first-years they’d enticed were scrambling to get away from the pool now that one of the mermaids had let herself be discovered by someone fast enough to react before he became a meal.

            “I won’t let this go on!” Enrique called out confidently. “Surrender and spare yourselves a beating!”

            “Not afraid to hit a lady, are you?” asked one of the mermaids who seemed to be in charge, one with pale blue hair and a purple bikini. “Or are you just not afraid even when you’re outnumbered? Idiot…”

            “Don’t underestimate my power! My father battled with the strongest monsters in the world!” Enrique called back challengingly this time, then dove underwater swimming with blinding speed at them. Three swam out to meet him, but he suddenly blasted a cloud of his poisonous purple gas right at them. Mermaids were too similar for it to do much harm, but in the water it spread like ink and entered their eyes, blinding them long enough for Enrique to spin in place like a whirlpool and send them hurtling toward the edges of the pool. He grabbed one by her tailfins and threw her into the fence.

            He lashed out at the other two with his feet and they crashed into the side of the pool. Another mermaid slammed into his chest but Enrique sucked in a breath and thick bony spikes jutted out of his stomach and knocked her away. Before he could recover another mermaid sank her teeth into the back of his neck. Enrique’s cry sent a silent of stream bubbles upward, and then the other mermaids piled on him…

 

XXX

 

            Nigeki clenched the fence with his fingers, deforming the loops of metal. The merman he’d fought when he’d become the Tear struggled to pull free from his enemies but was dragged underwater. Behind him he saw Mrs. Dreemurr casting a questioning look over her shoulder as he herded students away from the pool.

            Someone had to do something, but if he went to get help, who knew if Enrique and the other boys would last that long? And if he joined the fight himself, it would almost definitely mean falling in the pool…could he even survive that? If he dared to change into Bloodstone in front of all those attacking mermaids, would that protect him or just make him even more vulnerable?

            Someone tugged on his jacket. It was a boy still in his trunks, one of the ones who’d managed to get away when Enrique had noticed what was going on. Behind him were a ragged grouping of other students. Most had just run away, leaving their club booths empty when it was obvious a fight was breaking out. Even though they were monsters underneath the faces of ordinary teenagers, most of them didn’t want any part of a deadly battle. Nigeki couldn’t really blame them.

            But he’d still almost beaten Enrique to death, and now Enrique was risking himself to fight off a bunch of dangerous girls and losing badly himself. Nigeki couldn’t just watch.

            “Go find the teachers or somebody,” he said. “I’ll go this way, you guys go that way,” he said, pointing back toward the main school building.

            “Whatever you say!” And the other students ran off. As Nigeki threw open the gate and stepped onto the pool deck, Moka, Kurumu and Yukari were right behind him. A mermaid spotted them and made a powerful jump at Kurumu, who sprouted her wings and flew out of the way. The mermaid slammed onto the cement deck, but slashed at Moka and Yukari with her claws and strong tail. Yukari waved her wand and a wash tub fell from the sky and knocked the mermaid unconscious.

            Moka grabbed Nigeki’s wrist and tried to touch his hand to her Rosario and free her true self, but he yanked away. She looked at him in surprise and fear, her eyes probing him as if hoping for an explanation for his refusal.

            He looked away, to where Yukari stood on the deck and blasted a pair of mermaids away with a storm of tarot cards and Kurumu swooped down slashing with three-foot-long fingernails. He’d tried to kill Kurumu when he’d changed into a Tear before, but after he’d recovered she’d come to him and tried to make amends. Yukari had saved him from being sliced to pieces by Lord Raptor, and he still wasn’t sure why she’d been excited when Moka had claimed they were a couple, but there was another person at this school with some faith in him.

            And Moka herself…“It’s not part of you, I don’t believe that. It’s something in you that doesn’t belong.” That was what she’d said about the Tear sleeping inside him, waiting for the chance to wake and take over his body. And for the second time she was offering to suffer a horrible shock and fight so he didn’t have to, even though she’d have the same aversion to water he did.

            All of them had seen he could become one beast or another. All accepted it and had faith in him anyway. He wasn’t supposed to be getting into fights, he was supposed to be making friends and staying out of trouble to keep the Tear in check.

            But could he repay the faith of these three by doing nothing when a fight broke out?

He couldn’t.

            “ **Henshin!** ” Nigeki said and his belt appeared and armor flowed into existence around his body. This time there was no yellow light seeping through the eye sockets in his skull mask, and still a feeling of distance from his body as during his fights against Saizou and Lord Raptor.

But this time, it wasn’t quite as if another being only driven by the need to prove its superiority was taking over. Instead there was a drive to defeat their enemies but…it was as if it was to save a member of their pack instead.

Then there was no more time to think, as Bloodstone was moving like a blur toward the pool.

            “ **Blood Cutter** ,” came the deathly voice from his belt. The blades on his gauntlets flickered red and red crescents shot from them into the ring of mermaids swarming around Enrique. They screeched and scattered, and Bloodstone took a powerful leap into the middle of the pool.

            As soon as his feet touched the water sparks jumped off his body, carving small craters into his armor. His body jerked violently toward the closest edge of the pool, rebelling as currents of agonizing electricity seemed to travel through his body. The blades on his elbows flashed to their full length and he slashed wildly around him to keep any of the hideous mermaids from getting close enough to do any damage. One of them, a girl with flowing pink hair a lot like Moka’s, screamed in terror as she saw Bloodstone wading in her direction and swam to the far side of the pool. She desperately dodged out of the way of any of the other mermaids she passed, and wasn’t showing a gaping mouth of dangerous teeth or black talons like the others, and for Bloodstone that marked her as one thing: a non-threat.

Another minute and Bloodstone shouldered his way through the water to the middle of the pool, heaved Enrique onto one shoulder and jumped to the edge of the pool.

            As he set down the merman, he heard one of them groan in disgust at the throbbing veins crisscrossing his armor. “What _is_ that?” she asked.

            “Leave this one to me, girls,” said the green-haired mermaid who seemed to be in charge. “Seems like we’ve got a hero on our hands!”

            “If you say so, Tamao…”

            Tamao jumped out of the water then swam to the far side of the pool then swam in Bloodstone’s direction, waving her tail above the water as she built up force and then stopped against the wall of the pool. The speed she’d built up created a wave that washed over the edge and crashed down on Bloodstone and Enrique before it smashed them through the fence around the pool.

            Bloodstone grunted in pain and tried to push himself to his knees but it was a few seconds before enough feeling came back to his body that he could even try. Moka ran to his side and supportively clutched his shoulder. “Nigeki, are you okay??”

            But he found he couldn’t answer. Whatever instinct was controlling him just stood him up and stepped away from her without saying a word. Enrique’s attackers needed to learn what a mistake it was to challenge them. He crouched, and jumped as high as he possibly could.

            Bloodstone turned over and over as he climbed higher, building up power. Twenty, thirty, then forty feet before gravity seized him and he started falling again, spinning as he got closer to the water. “ **Blood Cyclone** ,” said the deathly voice of his belt just before he hit the water.

Hard red pellets sprayed from the edges of Bloodstone’s blades as he spun, pelting the mermaids and pushing them to the edges of the pool. But as he spun they grew bigger, blasting away at the sides of the pool before the water could dissolve them. In a second there was a terrible roar as a red whirlwind ripped upward from the water, and the mermaids and their victims alike were sent flying all over the deck.

            Bloodstone grabbed onto the edge of the pool hard enough his fingers sank half an inch into the cement and hauled himself out with a snarl of rage from the electric arcs surging all over his body from the slick sheen of water. He fell to his knees next to one of the mermaids. The one who’d desperately avoided him when he’d been trying to save Enrique.

            “Please! Please don’t hurt me!” she wailed. “I didn’t want anything to do with it! I mean it!” Bloodstone raised his arms, and then his armor shifted into a wet consistency and sprayed away, leaving Nigeki in his place, who immediately collapsed.

            “I won’t hurt you, I promise,” he said, his voice dry and strangled. Small bolts of electricity still jumped from his shoulders for a few seconds. “I’m sorry I did that, but I can’t completely control what happens after I change, and my friend was in trouble…”

            She slowly lowered her arms, apparently convinced by his claims. She certainly didn’t look much like the other vicious creatures that had attacked Enrique. Her tail was long and pink like her soft, straight hair. The only thing she had on was a black bikini top showing off entirely too much cleavage, and Nigeki was so numb it was all he could do to roll over onto his other side to make sure he wasn’t caught staring. He almost fell back into the pool as he did.

            The mermaid giggled, but Nigeki barely heard it. His vision was already swimming as he saw a group of people in all-black uniforms running up the ramp to the pool and throwing the gate open. Then everything went black.

           

XXX

 

            As soon as Nigeki could see anything he jerked up and touched a hand to the skin over his heart, and to his relief there was only a tiny spot that was cool and smooth like a rock. It had had a chance to spread a little thanks to something unpleasant he’d been dreaming about, but he hadn’t been out long enough for it to be very much.

            His vision slowly cleared and he saw he was lying in one of two rows of simple white bed with wrought-iron frames. A few of them were occupied by other boys who were still unconscious: the mermaids’ victims. In the far corner he though he recognized Enrique.

A middle-aged woman in a white dress was working at a desk at one end of the room, but when she saw Nigeki sit up she scurried out the door and a second later came back with a tall girl in the black uniform of the school’s Public Security Committee.

            Tall indeed, Nigeki had a feeling she’d be over his head if he was standing up. She had a long blonde ponytail down past her waist, and a massively developed chest he worked hard to avoid staring at, focusing instead on the name on her uniform’s chrome name plate: C. Shianus. Hanging from her belt she actually had a long sword in its scabbard, the tip of which dragged on the ground as she walked over to him like it was too big for her. She held a half-eaten carrot in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

            “You’re awake,” she observed simply.

            “What happened?” Nigeki asked in a raspy voice. “The thing with the mermaids…”

            “You passed out from dehydration, according to the nurses,” the girl answered. “According to one of the mermaids who claimed she was coerced into going along with the rest of them, they’d been trying to feed discreetly but the violence broke out when they were discovered by one of their victims. Do you remember seeing anything strange? Besides mermaids drinking from the students’ necks?”

            Nigeki’s throat clenched. “Like what?”

            Her eyes narrowed. “A few of them reported someone wearing a mask and red armor being responsible for blasting them all over poolside and half-emptying the pool.”

            “Maybe they should think of it as ‘half-filling’.”

            “ **This is not a joke** ,” the girl growled, and Nigeki jumped, fully alert. “If that wasn’t just some kind of delusion and a Kamen Rider really has managed to infiltrate the campus, all the students are at risk.”

            “I know how to recognize them,” Nigeki said, avoiding the girl’s eyes. “And I didn’t see anything like that. I was just trying to save a friend of mine in trouble, and I guess I overdid it running around looking at clubs before that.”

            She sighed. “All right. You’ll have the chance to look at them tomorrow; the club drive was pushed back because of the incident at the pool. But if you remember anything, you let one of us know right away, understood?”

            “Understood, Shianus-san. Do I need to stay here, or can I go now?”

            She looked over at the nurse who nodded, and said, “You’re free to go. Next time there’s trouble, get help. Getting into fights isn’t what you’re here for,” she told him sternly.

            “I’ll keep it in mind,” Nigeki said, but slipped away as fast as he could.

 

XXX

 

            As soon as Nigeki was back in his room he ripped a blood bag open with his teeth and drank until every drop was gone. He sank down against the wall, but at least he could feel his strength coming back.

            Resisting the effects of water and using one of Bloodstone’s most draining attacks like that had left him dry, and the nine bags of blood still nestled in the corner of his closet, the ones that were supposed to last him the whole semester, seemed pitifully inadequate now.

            It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If he got into a situation where he was in danger of the Tear awakening, he was supposed to get away and change to Bloodstone in private. Just to keep the Tear in check, not go plunging headfirst into danger and risking exposure.

            But he had. And as he passed his hand over his heart and the cool disc of stone covering it, he didn’t regret it.

 

XXX

 

            “You don’t have to do this because you feel bad or anything,” said the pudgy bespectacled boy, but Nigeki sighed and shook his head.

            “Let’s not bring that up, okay? Please?” Nigeki asked. “I really do want to try out. Be up in front of people doing something amazing, you know? Break down my barriers?” His family had been trying to avoid exposing him to anything that might cause the darkness in him to show itself. While they’d certainly meant well, after his revelations from yesterday, Nigeki was thinking the opposite might do him more good in the end.

            They stood in the school theater along with about a dozen kids coming back from last year’s drama club. Ryuunosuke, the pudgy boy, turned out to be the club president, and looked far more pleased with the number of kids who showed up to try out than how many of them were cute girls with the way he and the blonde girl he’d made out with the day before kept smiling at each other.

            Nigeki was a little surprised himself at how many there were. Moka, Kurumu and Yukari had immediately announced they were trying out too once Nigeki had said he’d found a club he felt like joining. Also there was the pink-haired mermaid who hadn’t joined in the carnage the day before, wearing a black dress over now-human legs, but sitting in a wheelchair. Even Enrique had shown up to try out.

            “Hello, class!” an alluring female voice called out, and immediately all eyes turned to the owner, a tall woman with curves evident even through the black blazer and skirt she had on. Her hair was pulled back into a practical ponytail, and was a bright blue that made Nigeki think of clouds. She had on glasses as she entered the theater but took them off, twirled them nimbly around one finger and slid them into her breast pocket as she approached the stage and jumped onto it with casual ease. “My name is Miss Bast…you can call me Miss B if that’s easier. I’m going to be the faculty advisor for this club.”

The mermaid studied Miss Bast’s face thoughtfully. “Haven’t I seen you before? I think it was on an album cover…”

            “Nya! That’s wonderfully flattering of you to say,” Miss Bast blushed, but a second later was all business, “Does everyone have a scene picked out for their audition already?”

            “Yeah!” Nigeki said, holding up the sheets he’d copied and trying to sound enthusiastic.

            “Well that’s great!” Miss Bast smiled. “Why don’t you go first since you’re fired up, cutie?” Nigeki didn’t see Kurumu balling her fists.

            He got onto the stage and the other kids settled into the seats. Glancing at the sheets of his chosen scene, Nigeki began, “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York, all the clouds that lowered upon our house…”

 

XXX

 

            Miss Bast finished reading off the list she’d made of the students who’d made the cut. Moka beamed when she heard Nigeki’s name being called, then her face fell when she didn’t hear hers. Or Yukari’s. It was a little relief when she didn’t hear Kurumu’s either.

            “But…what did we do wrong?” Yukari protested.

            Moka had done a reading as Desdemona from Othello, Yukari had picked a scene as Wendy from a version of Peter Pan, and Kurumu had tried to one as Juliet. Nigeki certainly hadn’t thought they’d done that bad, but Ryuunosuke and Miss Bast didn’t seem to agree.

            “I’m sorry, some of you just don’t have the kind of spark we’re looking for,” Miss Bast said apologetically. “But just because you aren’t good at one thing doesn’t you aren’t good at _any_ thing. I’m sure you’ll find something else you’ll get into.” She scribbled something on the bottom of her paper and ripped it off. “In fact, with how adventurous you all showed yourselves yesterday with the incident with the swim club, I think I know one that’d be perfect for you. Why don’t you report to this room and see?”

            Moka took the slip of paper and walked out of the theater disappointedly. Nigeki watched them go, but she turned toward him and shook her head when he was about to jump down from the stage from the stage and go after her.

Once they were gone, Miss Bast exclaimed, “Okay! Does anybody have any suggestions for productions we could put on this year?”

            “The Little Mermaid,” the mermaid girl immediately piped up.

            “Any others?”

            A chorus of production names went up. Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Much Ado About Nothing. Kayo Komachi. Even Kanahedon Chusingura, although Nigeki didn’t even try to imagine himself in kabuki makeup.

            “Phantom of the Opera,” Nigeki spoke up.

            Miss Bast looked at him appraisingly. “Oh yeah? Thinking you’d make a good Raoul?”

            “I was thinking I’d make a decent Erik.”

            “Well, we can decide later, but those are all interesting ideas. Welcome to the Drama Club, kids!”

            The mermaid rolled herself over to Nigeki’s side and gently tapped his arm to get his attention. “That was a very interesting choice you made,” she said, and her blush deepened even further. “Such a wonderful tragic love story…”

            “You’re really into those, sounds like?”

            She nodded. “My suggestion is very popular with mermaids. It’s a dream a lot of us have, to have a star-crossed love like that.”

            “Well, if we’re going to be in the same club maybe we should introduce each other?” he suggested and extended his hand. “I’m Nigeki.”

            She smiled and shook it. “I’m Meroune. Thank you for not hurting me,” she smiled, eyes dancing and cheeks a faint pink.

            “You’re welcome. Say, um, could you…”

            “Keep it a secret?” she whispered, and nodded before she cupped her cheeks to hide her blush deepening. “Of course! A forbidden passion like that is just what I’ve always wanted!”

            “…huh?” Nigeki asked, sporting a huge sweatdrop.

 

XXX

 

            “Well, if it isn’t the new members! You came highly recommended!” gushed Miss Nekonome as Moka, Kurumu and Yukari looked around the room where they’d been directed. There hadn’t exactly been a big turnout. The only other student there was a black-haired boy with a pendant shaped like a wolf’s head around his neck.

            “Isn’t there anybody else?” Kurumu asked.

            “Fewer’s better, in some ways,” the boy replied. “Everyone will get to do a bit of everything that way. I wouldn’t mind more members, especially when they’re all as _charming_ as you three,” he broke into a dazzling smile. “But it was everyone else’s last year.”

            “So this is the school newspaper?” Moka asked. “Well, that would have us going all over campus…sure.”

            The boy grinned even wider. “Ladies! Welcome aboard! I’m the club president Ginei Morioka, and I’d like to make this a great year for everyone!” He bowed to them, and as he did a stack of polaroids of girls changing fell out of his back pocket…

 

XXX

 

            The Headmaster rose from his desk as his guest entered. “Has everything been…assured?” he asked.

            “It has,” Felicia nodded. “I’m still not sure I agree that this boy you need me to watch shouldn’t be allowed in the same activity as his friends. Keeping his spirits would be a lot easier.”

            “But being able to carefully guide him wouldn’t,” the Headmaster repeated. “And it’s not as if we’re banning from each other’s company. They can still see one another outside of their clubs. Any issues?”

            “No,” Felicia answered. “I think he’s on firmer ground than you were worried. Especially after the swim club incident.”

            “Good. Keep a close eye. That was only the first step.”

            Felicia nodded slowly. She had a feeling she’d be keeping her eye on Nigeki Hitoribo for a while.

 

XXX

 

            **The PSC discover the existence of Nigeki’s alternate form here, which promises trouble in the future.**

 

            **Here I introduce a girl from another monster harem comedy series, but I thought she’d be an okay fit. Meroune not mastering her human form and needing a wheelchair might seem like an odd decision, but I wanted to keep her familiar.**

**Hope you’re enjoying.**


	5. Brink

 

            Things were settling into a routine at the Newspaper Club. First was roll call, which usually went pretty fast. Second was making sure the club president hadn’t found a new way to hide a camera under the meeting table. Third was to report any campus events and decide just how much attention and whose they merited.

            It was during this part of their routine that Ginei found himself repeatedly trying to assert authority over the proceedings with mixed success. Kurumu kept suggesting she go and see what the Drama Club was up to even though it was way too early in the year for them to be up to much of anything. Kurumu was usually undiscouraged by such facts, and it was only under a disapproving glare from Moka that Kurumu gave up and brought up something else.

            One day the club members arrived only to find a note from Ginei:

 

            “Chasing down material for story. Front-page stuff. Have material for all current assignments ready for submission before leaving today. Keep up the good work, ladies.

 

\--Ginei ^_~”

 

            “Eeeech,” Kurumu grimaced at the lech’s attempt at a cute signature. She was eying the door when she felt Moka’s trademark glare on her again.

            “If you keep trying to duck out you’re going to end up in trouble,” the vampire warned her.

            “Oh, like you aren’t thinking the exact same thing,” Kurumu retorted.

            “Maybe, but I’m thinking about making the most of where I am and letting my best friend make the most of where he is, not ditching to keep hanging around even though you didn’t make it into the same club.”

            “I did awesome!” Kurumu declared. “It’s not my fault that stupid teacher wouldn’t know a great performance if it bit her on the ass!”

            Yukari saw the sparks flying and surreptitiously reached for her wand when Kurumu suddenly whipped to face her and the tip of a long pink claw hovered an inch from her face. “Try it you little brat!” Kurumu yelled. “I dare you!”

            Then shooting Moka one last irritated glare of her own, Kurumu stalked off to get what she was prepping ready.

            An uncomfortable silence filled the club room as everyone split up and got to work, Moka and Kurumu sitting as far away from each other as they could and still shooting each other angry little glances.

            An hour slipped by. Kurumu got up and Moka was on her feet in a second. “Where are you going?” Moka asked.

            “What are you, my mom?” Kurumu groaned. “Oh wait, even she isn’t this bad!”

            “Yukari, go see if you can find Ginei,” Moka said quietly.

            Yukari made a face. “Do I really have to?”

            “ **Yes** ,” Moka said, and Yukari saw how serious she was and left as fast as she could.

            After the door closed Moka’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you always trying to sneak away? Don’t you care about your responsibilities here?”

            “Holy shit…,” Kurumu muttered under her breath. “Maybe I don’t really. Maybe because this was picked for me.”

            “Just because you tried out doesn’t mean you’ll get picked. I know that,” Moka said.

            “Oh, drop it!” Kurumu yelled. “You’re on my case because you don’t trust me to be around your _boyfriend_ , do you?! Except he isn’t! I’ve got as much right as you do!”

            “After what you did?? Even if you didn’t know about the Tear, you hypnotized him and tried to make him your slave!”

            “Save it!” Kurumu yelled in Moka’s face. “I can’t feel bad about something I did and try to make things better?!? Is that what you think??”

            “If you feel so bad about it why did you do that in the first place?” Moka demanded. “Nigeki wasn’t the first boy you tried that on! How many were there, anyway?”

            “Do you even care **why** , or do you think that’s just something I **do** because I’m a succubus?” Kurumu asked coldly.

            Moka sucked in a deep breath to steady herself before this could get any nastier. “Why, Kurumu?”

            Kurumu sighed and looked away for a few seconds before she answered. “We’re dying.”

            “What?”

            “ **We’re dying** ,” Kurumu repeated, harder this time. “Succubi. More and more of us are being hunted down or going missing. Last time anyone did an estimate there were only a few thousand left anywhere. Here and in Makai Realm. Everyone’s leaning so hard on me to make sure I find somebody and help keep things going. I hypnotized all those boys because I was trying to find my destined partner...I don’t feel like I can do it that way anymore, but my mom calls me every single night and wants to know if I’ve found somebody yet. People I don’t even **know** are calling me and asking me that! Hell if I know how they found out I’m here! And my mom chewed me out for half an hour  when I told her I wasn’t going to use my powers to get boys anymore! You think that was **fun**?!”

            At that Kurumu walked away and sat down heavily at the meeting table, her face in her hands. Moka slowly approached and reached out to put a supportive hand on Kurumu’s shoulder, but the succubus jerked away.

            “Don’t. Just leave me alone,” Kurumu groaned.

            Without a word Moka stepped away, left the club room and shut the door behind her.

            Maybe there were some things she needed to think over.


	6. Closing the Distance

            “Okay everybody, that’s it for today! Nigeki, if you wouldn’t mind hanging around for a little bit, that’d be great,” Miss Bast said to Youkai Academy’s Drama Club.

            “See you later, man,” Enrique said, giving Nigeki a smile that seemed unusually bright as he ended his conversation with the young vampire and filed out with the other club members. As Nigeki walked over to Miss Bast, she sat down on a desk they’d moved to the middle of the stage, let out a sigh of relief and let her heels fall from her feet and onto the floor. It was a second before Nigeki realized he was staring at her stocking-clad legs.

            She snapped her fingers and he jumped. “Hey, cool it,” she said, but he was sure there’d been a coy smirk on her lips just before she’d said that. “So, you still thinking we should put on Phantom of the Opera for this term’s production?”

            “It was just one idea.”

            “Well, the other kids are starting to let me know what roles in it some of them are thinking about. I think we can probably go ahead and assume that’s what it’ll be and start set designs soon.”

            “Really? That’s great. Right?”

            She chuckled softly. “Yes, I think so. But Nigeki, I needed to ask you something. That girl with the blue hair who keeps coming in to talk to you, is she a friend of yours?”

            He nodded. “Yeah. She’s in the Newspaper Club.”

            “Okay. Look, I don’t want to give you shit or anything, but clubs aren’t just about hanging out with your friends. They’re about enriching yourself through the activities. I need you to tell her that, and that she needs to be focusing on her club duties and not just coming around to talk to you all the time. All right?” Miss Bast asked.

            “Yes, Bast-sensei,” Nigeki answered, looking down. He wasn’t liking the idea of telling Kurumu she wasn’t welcome, even though he’d known it wasn’t really appropriate for her to keep coming around to talk. It would probably be better to take a stand now than later, though…

            She extended one leg and touched her toes against his chin, raising Nigeki’s face to meet her eyes again. “It’s Miss Bast, or **Miss Bee** if that’s too hard to remember,” she said in a teasing American accent. “Hey, cheer up, okay? You’re supposed to be enjoying this, right?”

            “I don’t know if that’s quite the word I heard about high school,” Nigeki replied, but did smile a little.

            “If you don’t now, when you’re out of here you’ll wish you did,” Miss Bast said with a playful smile. “Now get going, kid. I’ll see you later.”

            “Sure thing, **Miss B**. See you around,” Nigeki said. Did she wink at him as he turned to go?

            Nigeki was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. It was too early to think about going back to his room yet; homework had been surprisingly light that day and he didn’t feel like sucking at playing the flute right then. But all of a sudden he noticed a slight dip in temperature and his predatory instincts twitched with the feeling of somebody nearby.

            “Hello? Is someone there?” he called.

            No answer, but the feeling of an unseen presence remain. Nigeki even thought he could feel the Bloodstone tingling a little at his waist, urging him to activate it and go on the attack against whatever was setting his senses on edge.

            The air got even colder and Nigeki’s fangs jutted from his gums. He started walking back to the dorms expecting Saizou or even Lord Raptor to come screaming out of the woods intent on a rematch. He’d passed the corner of the main building when someone yelled at him.

            “Hey!”

            Nigeki whipped around and landed with his feet planted, then saw Moka Akashiya running up to him. “Was that you?”

            “Was what me?” she panted when she stopped next to him.

            “I had a feeling somebody was near but they didn’t answer. Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

            “No.”

            Nigeki knitted his brow. “Weird,” he mumbled. If it hadn’t been Moka, and what reason would she have to sneak up on him, what had set him on edge like that? “What’s going on? Looks like you have something you need to tell me.”

            “I do,” his fellow vampire nodded. “You want to get a drink before we talk? My treat.”

            “Uh, sure,” Nigeki said, looking around one last time, and sure he saw a flash of lavender behind a tree before they left.

 

XXX

 

            Moka popped the top on a can of tomato juice while Nigeki bought a can of iced coffee with his own money at his insistence. He still had the feeling that whatever had set him off before was around, and wanted to stay sharp until he knew he was safe after all the fights he’d already found himself in.

            “Why do you keep looking around?” Moka asked.

            “Always looking out for trouble. Can you blame me after how many times I’ve had to change to Bloodstone already?”

            “You should really relax. That helps you keep from changing to the…other thing, right?”

            “…yes,” Nigeki admitted. “But I can’t really help it, can I? I’m supposed to keep a low profile but I’ve already been in a bunch of fights. Anyway, you wanted to talk about something,” he prompted Moka.

            “I really think you need to talk to Kurumu,” Moka answered.

            “What about?” Nigeki replied. “She comes by the Drama Club all the time, she only tries to talk to me,” he said, and for a second Moka scowled, but he didn’t notice in time. “Even though I don’t know anything I could tell her that deserves to go in the school paper. Miss Bast has been letting us get away with just talking about plays we like and stuff like that. I think she’s trying to let us get used to each before we start acting with each other, or something.”

            But he shut up when he saw how serious Moka looked. Worried. “Is it that bad?”

            Moka nodded slowly. “Kurumu’s under a lot of pressure from her family to meet somebody, she said. That’s why she keeps coming to talk to you.”

            Nigeki flinched. “W…what? Look, I’m still getting used to being allowed off the grounds without someone watching me. I’m not worrying about dating yet.”

            Moka’s face fell a little and she looked away. “Maybe you’re right.”

            “I’ll talk to her if you think it’s important,” Nigeki assured her. “But she doesn’t need to keep coming after me because she feels bad about me changing, I should’ve gotten out of there. But maybe…” Nigeki trailed off. He was supposed to be laying low, making friends and not getting in trouble here at a regular school. But if Kurumu hadn’t pushed him into changing, she’d still be bewitching boys. Even if Kurumu was taking heat from her family over it for the time being, hadn’t something positive still been achieved? It was seeming like she wanted to form an honest connection now.

            “I’ll talk to her,” Nigeki promised. “Having your family tell you you’re not living right sucks, even if sometimes they have a point.”

            “Good. I knew you’d understand,” Moka smiled and finished her drink. “But let’s try to hang out a little more, okay?”

            “I haven’t stopped thinking of you as a friend because we’re not in the same club,” Nigeki said, as if he was surprised by the idea. “Don’t worry, we will. Promise.”

            She smiled again, and Nigeki felt lighter. For a second he was eeven sure he could feel the Tear’s shell  on his skin shriveling. “Good! Thanks for this. I really appreciate it.”

            “Me too,” Nigeki said. “See you soon, okay?”

            Moka beamed and nodded in reply, “You bet!” Then they went off in opposite directions, Nigeki wondering how he could relate to family pressure to use mind control to get laid.

 

XXX

 

            Almost as soon as Moka was out of sight Nigeki felt he was being watched again, but this time he clenched his teeth and decided to take a different approach. He kept walking back to the boys’ dorm without giving any indication he knew he was being followed. Slowly, subtly, he edged closer to the trees bordering the trail he was walking down.

            Then suddenly he dropped his bag on the ground and darted into the woods, the darkness deepening in his vision as his predatory instincts took over. The outlines of trees and roots became starker allowing him to pick out shapes more quickly as his eyes shifted to those of a creature of the night.

He ran low, moving quickly and quietly around the outlines of tree branches toward a small point of orange he saw, the warmth of a living thing hiding among the trees. Strange, it was so much fainter, colder than he’d remembered from the few times he’d allowed himself to do this before.

But as soon as he was close enough he launched himself at the outline of warmth that he was sure was his pursuer and tackled them.

A girl’s gasp of surprise was the response just before they hit the ground, and Nigeki snapped out of his hunting mindset. He stared down into the ice blue eyes of a girl with long lavender hair. She had on a white sweatshirt with blue sleeves, pink and purple striped stockings below her uniform skirt and, strangely, a leather belt tied around her left thigh. The white stick of a lollipop stuck out of her mouth, which was formed into a shy smile.

“Hi,” she said with no emotion at all.

“Why were you following me?” Nigeki asked, and his skin crawled before he followed by asking, “And why don’t you seem like you care that I caught you?”

“Because I’m glad,” she said, again totally flat and calm. Nigeki almost expected her to add, “Can’t you tell?”

Nigeki stared at her in confusion and stood up before somebody came by and saw him pinning a girl he’d never seen before. He dragged her up until she was standing next to him, but she had an annoyed pout firmly on her face by the time he did.

“Why were you following me?” Nigeki repeated himself.

“You’re a loner too.”

“I’m what?”

She smiled in slight amusement. “You act uncomfortable all the time when you talk to people. You spent a whole week running away from that one girl even though she wouldn’t stop trying. It’s like you never had any friends before. But how you turn into that red thing with the skull face when you’re in trouble, it’s kind of understandable.”

Nigeki’s body went rigid and his throat went dry. “What do you know about it?” he croaked.

“A lot,” she smiled. “You’re fun to watch.”

He wasn’t sure to be afraid or embarrassed at hearing that. “You’ve been stalking me?” he gasped, but didn’t run like he felt he should. She knew about Bloodstone, and she’d let him catch her besides. She probably wanted something…

“Uh huh,” the girl blushed. “You’re strong. I like the red one more than the black one, though.”

“The black one is bad,” Nigeki warned her.

“No, it’s cool. But the red one’s cooler.”

Nigeki sighed and sucked in a breath. “Look, what do you want so you won’t tell—“

She pressed two chilly fingers against his fingertips. “It’s my secret,” she smiled. Nigeki didn’t think he’d ever been so confused in his life. Had his family sent him to school figuring he’d meet someone like this?

            He tried to steady himself, normalize this bizarre situation. “So…how are you settling in at school?” was the first thing he thought to ask.

            “School’s lame,” was the girl’s immediate reply.

            “Oh, I don’t know,” Nigeki said. “If nothing else I’m finally getting to be around people besides my family. I got into a couple fights—”

            “Mm-hmm,” the girl purred in approval.

            “…but I’m feeling a lot more relaxed about…well, certain things anyway. Maybe it technically isn’t as safe, but I’m handling it a lot better here than I did at home, and my family’s getting to focus a lot more on their work without always keeping an eye on me. I think it’s working out for the best,” Nigeki said, trying to give off a confident smile.

            “Huh,” the girl said. “Really?”

            He nodded. “Yeah. Pretty sure, anyway.”

            “That’s heavy,” she answered.

            “Yeah…look, you really won’t tell anybody?”

            She smiled and stepped away. “I told you. It’s my secret. See you around.” Then she seemed to melt into the trees, and this time Nigeki let her. He had a feeling she meant it. There had been something about her, like she really had finally met someone she finally thought she had something in common with.

            He wondered what that felt like.

 

XXX

 

            At the next Drama Club Ryuunosuke called roll as fast as he could and then he and his blonde beauty got up and disappeared into a far corner of the wings for a **very** private conversation. Nigeki had been hoping an upperclassman, and one obviously so versed with the ladies might have some advice to help him with Kurumu’s issue.

            But there were other perspectives. As soon as the president and his lady excused themselves Meroune stopped by his side. “I read to the end of the play you suggested,” she said, beaming and cheeks a light pink. “It’s so sad the way Erik feels about Christine…it’s exactly what we should put on!”

            “You’re really into those, huh?...Hmmm, say, Meroune, can I ask you a question?”

            Her blush brightened at the affection but she nodded. “Of course! Ask me anything!” she exclaimed. “And don’t be so formal…Mero-chan is fine…”

            “Well, um…I have this friend, right? Her family’s leaning on her really hard to meet somebody, and they want her to, um, cheat to do it. But she doesn’t want to cheat anymore.”

            Meroune looked at him, puzzled. “Cheat? To get dates? How?”

            “With monster powers,” Nigeki answered quietly, as it wasn’t something they were supposed to be openly discussing.

            “Oooooh!” Meroune nodded. “I see!”

            “So…so I should really go and try to make her feel better about it, but I don’t really know what to tell her. On the one hand people shouldn’t be mind-controlled into going out with somebody, but it’s not always that simple. I mean…I probably shouldn’t be allowed out of the house, but I still think it’s working out for the best. My dad tells me they’ve made a pair of big breakthroughs on the family project after I came to school since they can focus all their energy on that. I don’t know, maybe sometimes you have to do something extreme to ensure your survival when you’re an endangered species…” he rambled.

            “So your friend, her kind is dying? Is that what you’re saying?” Meroune asked.

            “Uh-huh.”

            Meroune took Nigeki’s hand in hers. “I think you might be overcomplicating this,” she answered. “This is a serious problem for her people, but tricking or controlling people into obeying her wishes is wrong, even if it’s for the good of her people, wouldn’t you say? Even if the benefits are good, isn’t achieving them hollow if you’ve forced other people to help you? Real triumphs come because people have been convinced of the worth of a goal and fought for it with their own effort, not because they were forced to achieve it. I don’t agree forcing someone to help with a goal is worth it, and I don’t think you do either.”

            Nigeki scratched his scalp with his other hand. This was getting him to think about his own situation, and coming clean to someone about at least the basics of it was something he was feeling he had to do. “Meroune-chan, what if I told you I had kind of a dark secret myself? That by all rights I should be kept somewhere people can make sure I don’t do any damage? Even if I’m kind of lucky in having made friends who can help me deal with it better than my family could keeping me around where they can supervise me?”

            “Everyone’s got the right to live their own life, don’t you think?” Meroune replied with a question of her own.

            “Well, yes, that’s what I’d think…”

            She smiled up at him. “So, if what you need is friendship and support, and you can’t get it one place, then you should be allowed to get it someplace else. You make it sound like you’re doing better here than when you were being kept confined and watched every minute. If that’s what you’re saying happened to you.”

             “It was!” Nigeki exclaimed more forcefully than he’d met, drawing stares from a few of the other club members for a few seconds before they went back to their own business. More quietly he went on, “It was, my family watched me all the time to make sure I didn’t give in and do something dangerous. But since I got here I’ve met some amazing people and I think I’m doing a lot better.” He looked her straight in the eye. “And I keep finding out how amazing the people I meet can be all the time. Thanks Mero-chan, you were a big help.”

            Meroune squealed and pulled her hand away, cupping her cheeks and looking down so Nigeki couldn’t see her face. All the club members looked up at them then, and Nigeki struggled to think of what to say to them, wondering what all this might look like to a teenage imagination. Enrique broke away from the group he’d been talking to and came over. “Everything okay, you guys?”

            Before Nigeki could answer, Meroune did for him. “Everything’s…wonderful,” she said, still not looking up, but giggled quietly.

 

XXX

 

            Before the president had actually called an end to the club meeting, Nigeki was leaving to go over to the Newspaper Club’s meeting room to try and catch Kurumu before she left. He hadn’t gone five steps before he was stopped dead in his tracks.

            “Got somewhere to be, Nigeki?” Miss Bast called out to him.

            “I really need to go talk to a friend of mine, and I want to catch her before her club meeting’s over.”

            “Well, since you’re being such a good friend, would you mind doing a favor for someone else?” she said, and then the girl with the lavender hair from the other night, lollipop still sticking out of her mouth which was curled up in a gentle smile, appeared from the shadows of some old scenery. “Mizore here’s finally decided to start attending school functions, and we want to make sure she actually knows where everything is. Show her around, okay?” Then she turned to Mizore herself. “Let him settle this thing with his friend before he takes you on the grand tour, all right?”

            “Okay,” Mizore answered, but her expression had gone neutral.

            “Let’s go,” Nigeki said and held out his hand, and Mizore clenched her fingers around it making Nigeki wince. As they left he saw Meroune looking at them uncertainly.

            Mizore relaxed her grip a little after they left the theater, but there was an undeniable intensity in the grasp of her cool hand around his. She stayed silent for most of the walk, drawing a few stares from other students who’d been let out of their clubs already. Nigeki tried not to pay attention to them, and to break the silence with Mizore, he asked as gently as he could, “So, you haven’t been going to class, then? Why not?”

            “I told you. School’s lame,” she replied.

            “What changed your mind, then?”

            “I just decided to try it,” she said, and Nigeki was positive her eyes darted over to him and a coy smirk passed over her lips.

            As they got near the main building Nigeki turned toward where he remembered Moka showing him where the Newspaper Club met, and walking down the path toward them was Kurumu, looking like it was taking a supreme effort for her not to lift the dark-haired boy next to her over her head and break him in half.

            “Get lost, Ginei,” she finally snapped, and the boy backed off. He jumped back at the force of her words and held up his hands defensively and walked away quickly. As he did his eyes stopped on Mizore, then on her holding Nigeki’s hand. Nigeki narrowed his eyes slightly, wondering who this guy was and what his intentions might be, especially if he’d pissed off Kurumu so much. It didn’t take this Ginei boy much to figure out this wasn’t the time to do anything, and he scampered away.

            “Hey, Kurumu!” Nigeki waved, and the succubus smiled as she recognized him, but paused as she saw him holding hands with another girl.

            “That’s your friend?” Mizore asked, slowly and coldly.

            “Yeah. I’ll be back in a minute and we can do the…tour? Promise,” Nigeki said and Mizore reluctantly let him go and he jogged over to Kurumu.

            “Who’s she?” Kurumu asked, a little suspiciously.

“Someone I’m showing around.”

Kurumu cocked her head. “Showing around? We’re supposed to have clubs picked out already, but she’s just starting?”

“Look, that’s not why I wanted to catch you. Moka told me about your mom being on your ass about not wanting to mind control boys anymore.”

“Well…no, I don’t,” Kurumu said, looking abashed. “Look what happened I tried to do it to you.”

“That’s kinda my fault too. I’m here under false pretenses, remember. And I should’ve gotten away when I noticed something going wrong. My family told me a million times the kinds of things that could set off the Tear,” Nigeki said as reassuringly as he could.

“But my point is, I really want you to know I think you’re doing the right thing, even if you’re catching shit from your family about it. And I’m proud of you for wanting to make things right with me even though I tried to kill you.”

Kurumu smiled and tickled a finger under his chin. “ **You** didn’t try to kill me. You wouldn’t be proud of me for how I’m doing if you wanted to kill me.”

“Well—” Nigeki started to say but then Kurumu grabbed the sides of his head and pulled him into a kiss.

It was quick, but Kurumu pushed hard against him. But when she broke it her cheeks were pink and she had a soft, almost shy smile on her face.

“Bet that was more fun than with your sister,” she winked at him as Nigeki struggled to remember how words worked. He managed to recover his footing but then his eyes settled on Mizore, who stood staring at the two of them, and after a second tears started to pool in the corners of her eyes. He’d just started to open his mouth when she turned and ran into the woods.

 

XXX

 

She should’ve known. When she’d finally found someone who **got** her, but seemed like he **got** school too, didn’t it just figure somebody else would’ve already claimed him? And that he’d say she was only a friend?

Mizore stopped after a few minutes of dashing through the trees, tripping over gnarled roots and scratching herself on low-hanging branches to catch her breath. She had no idea where she was going, but she didn’t care, as long as it took her away from that school. Away from Nigeki Hitoribo and his trashy “friend”.

Not far behind her she could hear voices. Was he coming after her?

“…I was supposed to show her around! You didn’t have to kiss me!”

“Oh, you liked it!!”

“That’s not the point!”

Again Mizore ran as fast as she could. Another few minutes she stopped, legs aching and lungs burning, at a cliff overlooking the blood-red sea.

Ever since she was little, Mizore had always watched people from afar, seeing them doing everyday things that always seemed so stupid. She’d felt so above all those people as they got so into their games or their lessons, when none of it seemed to matter for anything. They were happy they got a 100 on their test, or their team won the game, or the girl they really liked said yes when they asked her out. So what? Before you knew it there’d just be another test, and another game, and another girl who was even prettier than the last one.

When she’d seen that strange boy with even more monstrous shape he was hiding than most of the kids at their school, and she allowed herself to feel hope there could be someone she could relate to. Then he’d spotted her, and talked to her, and hadn’t minded that she’d been following him around without him even knowing. She’d felt something she never had before.

And it had been a lie. He’d known she was following him before he’d acted on it the other day; had he known all along? Had he been sneaking in time with his slut when Mizore had gone to sleep? Had he been planning to play Mizore like that too?

She walked to the edge of the cliff and stared down. A good hundred feet at least. But suddenly she was distracted from such thoughts by the sound of a twig snapping. She turned around, icy claws forming around her hands as she expected to see Nigeki coming for her. Instead it was one of the teachers. A fit-looking man in a white track suit with a mop of bristly red hair. Kotsubo, she seemed to remember his name being. A couple of times she almost hadn’t skipped his classes.

“All right now, step back from there, please. Things can’t be that bad,” he said slowly, like he was trying to make a point not to encourage her to do something desperate.

Slowly Mizore stepped away from the edge. “What are you doing out here?” Kotsubo asked. “You’re not supposed to this far away from campus.”

            “I don’t know,” Mizore muttered. “What about you?”

            “I heard someone crashing around out here and wanted to make sure there was no trouble. Is something wrong? Why are you so far away from campus?”

            Mizore stared at the ground. “I guess…I guess I’m depressed because I thought somebody really liked me, but…”

            Kotsubo nodded slowly and leaned against a tree. “That’s rough, but you know something? I went through that a couple times when I was your age too. It happens, and you know what? It isn’t the end of the world.”

            “Oh yeah?”

            He smiled and nodded again. “Yeah. I know you probably feel like this has never happened to anybody but you, but that’s how a lot of pain feels at your age. It’s not as bad as you think.”

            “I don’t know…”

            He slid his arm around her shoulder. “Come on!” he laughed. “Wounds heal, you know. They do, and you move on. Really.”

            “Really?”

            Kotsubo nodded.

            Then suddenly he pushed her down on the ground, and before she could recover from her shock he’d straddled her waist. Mizore shrieked and struggled, her hair starting to shift and shimmer, turning into icicles, but Kotsubo pinned her by the wrists with arms that were suddenly dark purple tentacles. More of the rubbery arms erupted from his back and one started to slither under Mizore’s skirt…

            …and then they heard the sound of a clicking camera.

            Kotsubo and Mizore both looked up and there stood Kurumu holding a camera in front of her face as she snapped another picture, and another as he screamed and lunged at her. But before Kotusbo could grab her a figure in red came flying out of the trees and slammed a gauntleted fist into his face. Kotsubo went skidding along the ground and off the edge of the cliff but his tentacles snapped out and grabbed the edge.

            Bloodstone stood up, the eye sockets of his mask devoid of light. Kotsubo was back on the ground in a second and lashed out at Bloodstone with three of the thick tentacles on one side, smashing through tree trunks like matchsticks. But as they slammed into Bloodstone’s body he dug in his feet and was only pushed back a few inches, and Kotsubo let out a cry of surprise and alarm as Bloodstone grabbed two of his tentacles and used the momentum of his own swing to throw Kotsubo’s rubbery bulk into the air. But Kotsubo curled the tentacles around Bloodstone’s arms and pulled him along as he went flying.

            As they crashed deeper into the woods Kurumu grabbed Mizore by the arm and pulled her up. “Come on, we need to get out of here!”

            “…why are you guys helping me?” Mizore asked quietly.

            Kurumu gave her a confused look. “What do you mean?? You think we’d see something like that happening and not help?!”

            “…I guess not,” Mizore answered.

 

            XXX

 

The sound of the two fighters clashing echoed through the woods. Kotsubo threw hard slaps with his many long tentacles trying to hold Bloodstone at bay with his superior reach, but Bloodstone weathered the pounding before he suddenly shot in and slammed a fist into the kraken’s chest hard enough to pulverize rock. Then before Kotsubo could retaliate Bloodstone somersaulted over his head, kicked him hard between the shoulders to knock Kotsubo off-balance, then hooked his arms around Kotsubo’s chest and flung him backward in a suplex, driving him headfirst into the ground.

But Kotsubo’s tentacles lashed out, coiled around Bloodstone’s legs and pulled him to the ground. He jumped and crashed down with all of his weight onto Bloodstone’s back. Kotsubo’s rubbery skin crawled as the vampiric beast didn’t make a sound of pain, even as Kotsubo slammed into his spine again, splintering the ground

As he jumped and came down again Kotsubo started to panic. He knew he needed to finish off his enemy and go after that girl with the camera, but Bloodstone did nothing to acknowledge his injuries. His body jerked slightly but he didn’t cry out, or bleed, anything else. This was no ordinary monster…

Again Kotsubo jumped but as he came down Bloodstone whipped onto his side and slashed with his arm-blade which bit into the kraken’s chest. Then Bloodstone’s buckle emitted a dry voice: “ **Knuckle Burst.** ” He threw a punch at the cut across Kotsubo’s chest and a globe of thick red **something** formed on his best and exploded as it connected. Kotsubo was thrown back twenty-five feet and landed in a tangle of tentacles. The cut from Bloodstone’s blade seemed to burn, and he gaped in horror as he saw the droplets of red from Bloodstone’s punch crawling inside the gash by themselves.

His body contorted from side to side suddenly with the feeling of tiny knives slicing at his insides. Kotsubo gasped in fear as Bloodstone came charging at him, another punch aimed at his chest. He ducked and ran past Bloodstone, grabbing a severed tree trunk in his tentacles and then heaving it at the vampire as hard as he could.

The tree slammed into Bloodstone and he seemed to float in the air for a few seconds before he crashed to the ground again. Spikes of wood stood impaled into his armor.

Then he got to his feet.

What kind of monster was this?? He hardly seemed to have any kind of fighting skill, but his power was incredible, and he only kept coming no matter how many times Kotsubo hit him as hard as he could.

The pain in Kotsubo’s chest got even worse as whatever had been on Bloodstone’s fist started to squirm further out from the cut. His body jerked and squirmed grotesquely and he realized with terror he couldn’t control himself to fight back as Bloodstone closed the distance between them to attack.

The jewel in Bloodstone’s belt flared, turning almost white as he gathered his power and launched his next attack. “ **Blood Riser** ,” it said and he pounded his fists into the ground a second before a red geyser erupted under Kotsubo’s feet and blasted him into the air, tossing him ass over tea kettle again and again before Bloodstone suddenly seemed to appear in the air next to him, and threw another punch with a red orb that exploded against Kotsubo, spiking him into the ground like a giant purple volleyball. He dug into the ground until he crashed into a tree and snapped it in half.

Bloodstone landed in a crouch, but looked up as two black-clad members of the Student Police dashed into sight. “Hold it right there, whatever you are!” one of them yelled at Bloodstone, but there was a slight quaver in his voice as his brain went down the list of the telltale signs of one of the most dreaded types of monster-killers.

Suddely Bloodstone released his armor and red sludge sprayed all over the clearing. It splattered against the polices’ eyes and knocked them down, and by the time they managed to clear their vision, there was no sign of Bloodstone but the scene of destruction he’d left behind.

But someone else had seen everything, and a tiny shape vanished into the shadows.

 

XXX

 

Nigeki, Kurumu and Mizore split up as they ran so they’d be harder to catch. Mizore just seemed to disappear between blinks, but that was something she’d probably had a lot of practice doing. Kurumu ran off as they passed a path back to the main school building, probably to get the pictures she’d taken ready.

But Nigeki himself kept going, rounding the edge of the cliff at the end of campus, deciding to make a circuit to get as far away from where he’d fought Kotsubo and maybe hide out for a while in case the Security Committee was watching the buildings and asked any ugly questions about whether he’d seen or heard anything right after a teacher was beaten within an inch of his life.

            He heart seemed to stop in his chest when he saw someone coming down the trail. Not a student he could easily shake off, either. It was that chubby science teacher with the dancing robot doll she made, Miss Alphaisa. As he tried to run around her she suddenly grabbed him with surprising strength and kept him from running off. Were those wires sticking out from the sleeves of her blouse?

            “Where are you in such a hurry to be?” she demanded.

            A dozen plans raced through Nigeki’s mind in a second, terrified that he’d been caught by a teacher and that his secret was about to be discovered. He thought about saying he was on his way to meet someone, that he was stressed out after class and needed to blow off some steam with a run, but in a moment of desperation he decided to do something he’d never done.

            Play innocent.

            “Didn’t you hear all those noises just now??” he gasped. “It sounded like a fight, like they were fighting as monsters! I was getting the hell away from that!”

            Her eyes went wide. “A fight?!” she asked, but with adrenaline still thundering through his system after his fight with Kotsubo, Nigeki’s awareness was unusually heightened, and Miss Alphaisa’s surprise seemed strangely…forced.

            “You go to your room and lock the door. Right now,” she went on. “I’m going to go let somebody know about the fight.”

            Then she scuttled off without another word.

 

XXX

 

A group from the Student Police stood in the corner and discussed in anxious whispers the entire time Kotsubo lay in the nurse’s office having his wound thoroughly cleaned. The medical personnel had no idea what the dark red matter from Bloodstone’s attack was, except that its outer coating resembled blood, yet the whole thing appeared to some kind of primitive life form itself. Thankfully, they’d apparently died quickly.

Once the nurse assured Kotsubo she was sure she’d found everything in his wound and left to empty the bowl containing the evil stuff, one of the Student Police’s captains came over. He was a tall, intimidating boy with long blond hair and yellow eyes along with slightly pointed ears even in his human form. Kotsubo felt like he was standing near a fire as the boy looked down at him and spoke.

“Sensei, you have my deepest condolences at being the victim of an encounter with a Rider. You should be glad you escaped with your life, usually they’ll settle for nothing less than their target’s complete annihilation,” he said.

“It’s a good thing your people got there when they did,” Kotsubo replied, a feeling gnawing at the pit of his stomach that this boy knew he wasn’t just an innocent victim.

“Indeed. But I hope you understand what a panic it would cause if word got out that rumors of a Kamen Rider on campus were more than just rumors,” the captain said. “So I would appreciate your cooperation in not spreading this around until we know more.”

“You can count on it,” Kotsubo said, just eager to be left alone.

The captain nodded and smiled in a strange, sadistic way, Kotsubo thought. “Yes, I’m sure I can,” he replied. “You see, we must address the other matter as well.”

“What other matter?”

            The captain’s smile got wider, and darker. “The matter of some courageous, if anonymous, monster bringing a certain set of photographs to my attention.”

            Kotsubo clenched his teeth.

 

XXX

 

Kurumu found Nigeki just after classes ended, and he’d barely registered her presence before she shoved a bag of fresh-made cookies into his hand.

“Hey,” she said, quietly, a little uncertainly. Almost as if she was expecting him to already know what was on her mind.

“Hey,” he said in return. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. But about, you know, before?”

“Yeah…about that. Kurumu, I think you’re really pretty, and you’re doing better trying to be nice, but this is the first time my family’s ever let me out of the house on my own. I’m not really thinking about dating yet.”

She smiled. “That’s okay, we can skip to the good parts.”

“I’m serious, Kurumu,” Nigeki replied.

Kurumu nodded at that and looked away for a second. “So…maybe later?”

“Yeah, maybe later. Friends now, though?”

She looked him in the eye for a second, then suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth again. “For now,” she answered with a wink.

“It was nice,” Nigeki said gently.

“Hmmm?”

“Just now, and before.”

“Oh,” Kurumu said, and her smile got a little wider. “Thanks…see you later.”

Nigeki headed to his own club meeting then, and as he went down the paths he couldn’t help noticing he saw students in Student Police uniforms going around in pairs and drawing uncomfortable stares from the other students. At least, until the Police looked back. It was as if they were making a point to be seen. After a faculty member had been assaulted by a Kamen Rider who’d somehow gotten inside the barrier, Nigeki supposed it wasn’t unreasonable for them to be worried…

He opened the doors to the theater and found everyone else already there. What he saw on stage then stopped him in his tracks.

“…and this is a really new experience for her, so I want everybody to help out our club’s new member if there’s anything she needs, all right?” Miss Bast said, holding out her arm to indicate a girl standing in the middle of the stage.

Mizore.

She ran her fingers through her long lavender hair and several boys immediately stepped forward and offered their assistance in helping her get settled. But she looked right past them and locked eyes with Nigeki, her mouth turning up in a faint smile around her lollipop.

He figured he’d be repeating himself soon. But as he climbed up to the stage and Mizore stepped away from the other students, he wondered if he needed to be taking it so slow after all.

 

XXX

 

            In her darkened room, Miss Alphaisa typed out an email.

            “…and for the last time, Undie, this country is not ‘the nerd capital of the world.’ I miss you and I wish you’d change your mind about coming to live here. Besides, Akihabara’s great! They’ve got **everything** there! Please at least think about it. And write back soon. Love, Alphys”

            Then she sent it off. She waited a minute, sighed, and then opened a secured, secret connection and started typing up a new email.

            “No further developments on Subject V-1. Powers contained, but still one to watch. Subject V-2, on the other hand, has manifested again. A teacher is in serious condition (a condition he deserves, but I digress) after this most recent manifestation. Will continue to monitor, but not sure I can handle it myself if manifestation runs out of control. Already unlike any monster I’ve ever seen.”

           

 

XXX

 

**I’d been considering a pair of different resolutions for Kotsubo, but didn’t really think they were doable. So, justice is dispensed, but by somebody the longtime fans might find a little unlikely. Somebody who’s probably going to be happy for a little good PR from it, though.**


	7. Masks

 

At the next meeting of the Drama Club, Nigeki was surprised to have, Ryuunosuke, the club president actually call the club to order instead of sneaking off to make out with his girlfriend. Nigeki couldn’t help noticing that Ryuunosuke was being sharply observed by Miss Bast, the faculty adviser, the whole time.

            “It’s about time for us to start getting ready on our production for the term, and I wanted everyone to know I’ve appointed Ren here our head costume designer,” Ryuunosuke said, indicating a girl Nigeki and his friends in the club had seen a few times but never really talked to. She had curly blonde hair and her narrow triangular face was covered in makeup, dominated with the color lavender in her eye liner and blush. Her uniform was modified a little with stockings and stiletto heels, and over her hands she wore lace gloves that only covered the middle finger on each hand, leaving the rest of them bare. Her fingernails were painted the same color as her lips.

            Ren waved lightly in acknowledgement to the rest of the club, but for a second her eyes settled on Nigeki, with Mizore standing inches away on one side and Meroune sitting beside him in her wheelchair on the other. Her gray eyes seemed cold, like a snake about to spring, and set his hunter’s instincts on edge. Did she somehow know about him being Bloodstone and getting into all those fights? Was she going to report him to the disciplinary committee if she found some way to prove it?

            “So, if I understand this right you’re going to be playing our Phantom, Hitoribo-san?” Ren asked in a slightly low voice. Had that been why she’d looked at him so closely? Just that?

            “He is if nobody else is interested…?” Miss Bast asked the club in response. None of the students answered. “I guess we’re still auditioning the rest of the parts after this, then.”

            Ryuunosuke raised his hand. “Raoul’s been filled, too.”

            “No he hasn’t, director-san,” Miss Bast said with a smile. The pudgy boy looked down, crestfallen.

            Ren came over and looked Nigeki in the face. “Hmmmm…You know, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ is kind of a strange choice.”

            “I guess I relate, a little,” Nigeki replied, his throat going dry. “Cut off from everyone else, I mean.” There was something more to Ren, he was sure of it. What?

            Meroune and Mizore glared at Ren, who didn’t seem to notice. Miss Bast clapped her hands then. “Could I get all of our would-be heroines over here to show us their pipes, as we say in America?”

Casting suspicious glances over their shoulders as they went, Meroune and Mizore joined a group of girls on the other of the auditorium, then Miss Bast demonstrated a long series of notes, veering high, low, and ever higher, keeping it up for most of a minute before she stopped, a proud grin on her face as she didn’t look at all out of breath. Evidently she’d been doing this sort of thing for a while. Then she had the girls repeated her one at a time.  
            “Strange isn’t bad,” Ren said, getting Nigeki’s attention again. “I kind of like strange, personally,” she purred.

“That’s…nice.”

“You are so tense. What are you worried about?”

Nigeki gulped but tried not to let Ren notice. “Look, I was staying with my family my whole life before I got to come here, okay? I’m not really used to socializing with so many other kids.”

Ren chuckled at that. “Ooooh, are you popular? That must be rough.”

Nigeki felt his fangs starting to edge outward in anger at Ren’s teasing, but he shut his eyes for a second and sucked in a breath. Not just to keep any trace of the Tear from creeping out, as small as that worry seemed to be since he started actually making friends, but because, well, he did have a strong group of friends already.

That **was** something to be grateful for, something to embrace. He finally had a good thing going for himself after all, and he needed to learn how to enjoy it, not get all annoyed at them for teasing him.

“Thanks,” Nigeki said, smiling lightly.

“You’re welcome,” Ren said as if she knew exactly what he meant, but flowed right into another thought. “If you’re going to be the Phantom, we’re going to need to do something about your face. No offense.”

“Hey Ren, you better stay away from that guy unless you’re looking for a broken heart. Don’t you know he’s already taken?” called a somewhat snide voice from across the stage. The owner was a lanky boy with shiny black hair pulled down over one side of his face. He hadn’t been too involved with the rest of the club, but Nigeki knew his name: Shingai Furabuki.

“No, I’m not,” Nigeki stated.

But Ren just laughed lightly and brushed a finger along the edge of Nigeki’s ear. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Look, you’re cute, okay? But you’re not my type. I’ll enjoy working to make you the perfect Phantom, though,” she said with a wink.

“How do you know I’m not your type?” Nigeki blurted out. “You don’t even know me.” As he said that he saw Mizore and Meroune turning to look back at him, and saw how close Ren was standing.

“Oooooh,” she purred, a soft chuckle creeping in at the end. “Looks like I’m not welcome. But I’ll catch you later and we’ll figure how to make you the scariest Phantom the school’s ever seen. Think about **that** for a bit,” Ren smiled and slipped away.

 

XXX

 

Nigeki had hardly even left the classroom of his last class of the day when a beautiful girl in a wheelchair bumped into him.

“Ah, there you Hitoribo-san!” It was Meroune, and she beamed up at him. “Miss Bast picked me to play Christine! Isn’t that great?? She said I had the best vocal range on somebody my age she’d ever heard!”

“That **is** great!” Nigeki replied. He’d never really thought about it before, but somehow it seemed natural for a mermaid to have a nice singing voice.

“I’m glad you think so,” she said, her cheeks turning pink at his enthusiastic response. “Maybe I could show you what I could do with the music she wanted me to learn, and you could tell me what you think…?”

“Sure!” Nigeki said, and leaned against a tree, looking at her expectantly.

Meroune fidgeted and looked around for a few seconds, not starting. “You mean…out here?” she asked.

Nigeki blinked. “I’m sorry, did you have somewhere else in mind?”

She nodded, looked hard over her shoulder as if she saw something and suddenly pointed toward the boys’ dorm. “Maybe we could go up to your room and I could show you in private…?”

“Uh, sure!” Nigeki said, and again Meroune’s face turned pink. As Nigeki wheeled her away he failed to see Ren walk up and look around for him.

 

XXX

 

He steered Meroune over to the front doors of the dorm, and stopped at the main stairway. Nigeki looked up at it thoughtfully for a minute, down at Meroune who was still smiling gently, then lifted her out of the wheelchair and sat her down in the crook of his arm, then collapsed the wheelchair and picked it up in his other hand before starting to climb the stairs with a grunt of strain.

Needless to say his fellow students they passed on the way up stopped and stared at the two as they went by. Meroune smiled as Nigeki carried, legs dangling beneath, up the landing of the second floor, then without stopping turned and started climbing the next flight of stairs.

As they left one of the boys asked the one next to him, “Is that the girl who was hanging around outside his room before? She had the long pink hair, right?”

“How did she get upstairs before if she couldn’t walk?”

Nigeki grunted and rounded the bend to the last flight of stairs up to his hall. Meroune slipped a dainty hand around his shoulders to steady herself. Hadn’t she? “I’m sorry to inconvenience you like this, Hitoribo-san,” she murmured. “But you’re just as strong as I remember…”

“Thank the heritage more than anything,” he said, setting down her wheelchair to open the door to his room and carrying her inside. He sat her down on his bed and set her wheelchair behind the door. “I’m sorry you had to see that at all, though,” he said, but Meroune smiled and shook her head.

“I’m glad,” she said. “We’re all trying to make a new future here, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Some of us more than others…”

Meroune looked away for a second, her expression distant and troubled. “Indeed,” she whispered. “A pure-hearted maiden and her gallant knight, pushed apart by the beast in his heart.” As she said it she grinned, blushed and buried her face in her hands.

“You say something?” Nigeki asked.

“Ah, no!” Meroune said and turned to face him with a smile again. She got a sheet out of music and said, “Shall I begin??”

Nigeki nodded, and Meroune launched into a slow, hypnotic song. Nigeki sat on the floor entranced, seeing Meroune smiling down at him as she sang yet somehow seeing someone other than one of his classmates. Some beautiful temptress, maybe, who’d grown lonely living in isolation because she knew this was the effect she had on anyone she interacted with. Finally she’d sought companionship and chosen him, and now the only thing in the world Nigeki noticed was her…

            His next door neighbors on both sides heard Meroune’s singing, put down their homework and leaned over to press their ear to the wall trying to hear more and wondering what was going inside Nigeki’s room.

            Students passing by in the hall heard Meroune’s haunting song and sneaked over to press their ears against the door to his room. Soon a wall of hypnotized students had formed outside Nigeki’s door, straining to catch every lilting note Meroune sange.

            “Hitoribo-san…?” she suddenly asked, stopping her song. “Do you get the feeling somebody’s watching us?”

            “What?” Nigeki asked, his suddenly seeming full of cobwebs. “No, but let me check to be sure.” He jumped up and pulled open the blinds on his window and looked outside, but even with the senses of a predator all he could see was a faint flicker of movement from something extremely cold…but his head was too foggy to think of what that could mean.

            “Nothing? Oh, never mind then,” Meroune said, suddenly calm and serene. When Nigeki looked back she’d produced meal boxes out of thin air and held one out for Nigeki.

            “You made dinner for us?” he asked, a little surprised but also still a little dazed. “Thank you.” He pulled the top off and gazed down at a fish dish. He couldn’t name it, but Meroune’s smile at his gratitude made it hard to think much on the food.

 

XXX

 

            After they’d eaten Meroune convinced Nigeki to do their homework together and he could only agree, having no idea how to politely tell a girl it was getting late.

            But one thing that amazed him about _this_ girl was how placid and regal she was, ready to take part in anything with a smile. Even something as boring as studying. He’d hardly noticed how the time had passed before Meroune turned and said, “Oh, my.” Nigeki turned and saw she was looking at the clock on his wall, and just about did a double-take when he saw it 10:15.

            “It’s so late,” Meroune observed. “And I couldn’t possibly ask you to take me all the way downstairs again. Maybe I should just stay over? Yes, that sounds like a good idea.”

            “What? No, I wouldn’t ask you to get in trouble over something like that,” Nigeki protested obliviously.

            “But—!” Meroune began, but Nigeki had already set her wheelchair out in the hall, gathered her up in his arms and carried her out into the hallway before she could think of anything to say.

            After they got to the bottom and Nigeki was pushing her back over to the girls’ dorm, Meroune cupped her cheek in her hand and looked wistful. “Too gallant to be taken in,” she murmured to herself. “Once again pushed apart by the purity of their souls and knowing their worlds are too different for them to ever be together…”

            “Huh? Did you say something, Mero-chan?”

            “No, nothing,” Meroune answered. After another minute they were at the girls’ dorm and Nigeki steered toward the aquatic species wing on the bottom floor. He grimaced as they passed a few doors, wondering if the members of Swim Club who’d beaten up Enrique and bullied Meroune lived there, and how she put up with it.

            Nigeki dropped her off inside her room, which was dominated by what seemed to be a small swimming pool, with a little waterfall on one side and a small recessed area with a seat and a lamp set up on the deck beside it that looked like it was meant to serve as a desk. “This is, uh, really neat,” Nigeki said, but she didn’t fail to notice him shivering a little at all the open water taking most of her room. “But I should really get going now…it was nice hanging out with you, Mero-chan.”

            “Yes, it was. Goodnight, Hitoribo-san.”

            He shut the door behind and his footsteps vanished down the hall. Meroune slipped into the water, not aware that even with Nigeki gone, she wasn’t alone in her room.

            An hour later other girls on the floor had to kick down the door to find out why she was yelling for help. They found Meroune trapped up to her shapely shoulders in a frozen pool.

 

XXX

 

            When class broke for lunch the next day, Nigeki had barely gotten his food and found an empty seat before a smiling Moka strode up to him with and had a seat on either side. “Hello there!” Moka beamed at the same time as Yukari. Nigeki wondered why he wasn’t blinded by their combined smiles.

            “We never see you anymore,” Yukari said. “Are you **that** busy with your play?”

            “Well, yeah, I kind of am,” Nigeki answered. “Where’s Kurumu? Doesn’t she hang out with you guys?”

            “She got a really bad headache all of a sudden,” Yukari answered immediately, a mischievous and knowing grin on her face for just a second.

            Suddenly there was a resounding crash and sound of shattering dishes, and the entire cafeteria seemed to freeze in place.

            Getting up off the floor was Ren, a wet brown stain on her blouse from whatever had been on her food tray when she’d fallen down. Well, not fallen down so much as been pushed over, it looked like. Standing over her was Shingai Furabuki, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

            “Oops,” he said. “Better watch where you step. Must be hard getting around in those spike heels you like so much.”

            “Hey—” Moka started to protest and get up from her seat, but Ren just got up, collected what she could of her spilled food, gave Shingai the stinkeye and walked away from him without saying a word. She spotted Nigeki and took the seat across from him.

            “Mind if I sit here?” Ren asked, paying no attention at all to the mess on her uniform. “I’d kind of like to show you some ideas I drew up for the mask. If they survived me falling down like that,” she added, saying it like it was nothing out of the ordinary.

            “Friend of yours from the Drama Club?” Moka asked, giving Nigeki a slightly helpless look like she wasn’t sure what else to say.

            “What mask?” Yukari asked, smiling curiously.

            Ren smiled and got a few pieces of sketch paper out of her bad that had, as she’d feared, been bent in half when she’d fallen. She sighed but got them out and unbent them to show them to the young witch. The first was a completely featureless white surface except for the point of the wearer’s nose and two softly grayed areas for eyes. “I was kinda thinking about something covering for the eyeholes so they couldn’t see inside when you had it on. You’d have to be careful walking around, but I think it’d help suggest what the Phantom’s about. All alone, a little afraid of himself, you know?”

            “Phantom? Like Phantom of the Opera?” Yukari asked. “That’s the play you guys are doing?” She chewed her lip thoughtfully for a second. “Why would you want to be the Phantom? Isn’t he the villain?”

            Nigeki cleared his throat while he thought an answer. “That’s…really up for debate. A lot of depictions say he’s more pathetic than evil.”

            “You’re not pathetic,” Yukari smirked.

            “You’re really not,” Mizore agreed, suddenly rising up out of nowhere next to Nigeki.

            Nigeki gasped and fell out of his chair, and gave Mizore a mock glare that made her smile ever so slightly in amusement at how badly she’d surprised him. “It’s called _acting_ ,” he said, then turned to Mizore. “How long were you there?”

            “I’m _always_ there,” she answered.

Mizore sat down, bumping Yukari from her spot on Nigeki’s right. Yukari scrunched up her face in annoyance and brandished her wand at Mizore, who calmly formed huge ice claws around her hands. “Hey, you guys—” Moka feebly tried to protest before a barrage of tarot cards flew and smacked into Mizore, chipping at her ice claws and pelting the rest of them with chilled dust.

Nigeki sighed and started to stand to try to break it up, but as he did he felt someone hook their arm through his and whisked him out a side door. He tried to pull free but stopped when he saw it was only Ren, a coy smile on her face.

            “What are you doing?” Nigeki asked as the sound of a table crashing as it was overturned echoed across the cafeteria.

            “Taking the Phantom somewhere peaceful to show him the rest of these,” she answered, holding up her creased sketches. Nigeki thought about going back to try to break up the fight in the cafeteria, but realized he had no idea how he’d do that without probably getting slammed through a wall himself. And even with all the confidence he’d been building up with the number of friends he’d made, getting hurt was still an awful risk.

            Ren stopped outside the main school building. After she’d caught her breath, she gave Nigeki a coy but questioning smile. “I’m guessing that’s normal for you?” she asked.

            He shrugged, finding himself smiling a little at the question. “Not really, at least not throwing crap around the cafeteria. But the friends I’ve made are definitely getting to be a handful. I don’t know, though. It’s a good kind of chaos, gives me something to focus on besides my own problems.”

            As soon as he’d finished saying that Ren thrust her sketches of the Phantom’s mask into his face. “Well, you’ve got a problem to focus on now. Which of these do you think works the best?”

            Obligingly Nigeki flicked through them, pausing at a black mask that left the mouth exposed with blood-like red running across the cheeks and forehead, and another mask the color of silver with blue streaks across the cheeks and forehead, matching the blue lenses over the eyes. “What if we had different ones for different occasions? Like this one,” Nigeki said, pointing to the red mask, “for if he’s stalking people in the tunnels, and the silver one when he’s talking to Christine face-to-face...” Ren raised an eyebrow. “You know what I mean. When they meet and he’s trying to impress her. Playing up that whole ‘Angel of Music’ thing he’d told her he was.”

            Ren rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “A mask for hunting and a mask for entertaining, huh?” she smirked. Nigeki smiled back a little, his cautiousness around Ren before melting away as he found himself appreciating her interest in her craft. And she noticed his smile and her own grew a little wider, seeming glad to find someone who could respect her passion.

            “Kind of surprised you didn’t think of that, Ren,” said a snide voice. “You have a mask on all the time.” It was Shingai.

            Ren made a sound of disgust in her throat. “Do you seriously have nothing better to do than harass me like this?” she demanded.

            “Harass you?” Shingai laughed. “I’m saving **him,** since it looks like you’re finally taking it all the way!”

            She turned away, sighing in disgust. “I’m sorry, Hitoribo-san,” Ren apologized. “I’ll see you later, **when we won’t be interrupted**.” She started to walk away but Shingai lunged at her with a malicious leer on his face. He grabbed Ren by the wrist, but then Nigeki grabbed Shingai by his other arm.         

            “Why don’t you back the hell off and leave her alone?” Nigeki warned.

            “ **Her**? Oh my god…” Shingai said with an amused gape on his face. Ren grunted and yanked her arm free, but as soon as she had Shingai punched Nigeki in the face, knocking him flat on his back.

            “You think cuz yer the star of the show or something like that, it means you get to tell me what to do?” Shingai laughed. Nigeki heard him as if in the distance, trying to collect himself and fight down the Tear within him before it had a chance to seize his feelings of pain and get strong enough to try to take him over.

            Ren shoved Shingai, who shoved right back and knocked her down too. Suddenly gray bat-like wings exploded out his back and all the hair receded into his scalp, his face changing into a skull-like, fanged mask of rage.

            He was a gargoyle, and he threw himself at Nigeki with an angry shriek.

            “You don’t even know, do you? You’re **that** stupid?? You have no idea what kind of freak your little girlfriend is!” Shingai cackled, but Nigeki heard none of it because at the same time he pounded his thick, hammer-like fists against Nigeki’s chest, then grabbed the young vampire by the shoulders and dragged him into the air.

            “ **She** ’s just as much of a freak as those half-breed **monstrels**! They think they deserve to be treated like full monsters!” Shingai continued to rant.

Meanwhile Nigeki’s body was aching all over and he was finding it harder to fight down the cold, clawing feeling of the Tear. He thought of changing to Bloodstone, amplifying his monster nature to the extreme so the Tear couldn’t take him over. But if he did, someone like Shingai would definitely spread it around. Who knew what would happen if the rumored Kamen Rider stalking the campus turned out to be more than a rumor, regardless of what his intentions were.

Suddenly Shingai’s ranting turned into a screech of pain as another winged shape flew up behind him and ripped foot-long claws up his back between his wings. He twisted to one side and smacked his attacker across the head with the edge of his wing, and dropped Nigeki while spinning away from the new combatant.

As he fell Nigeki looked up and saw that the one who’d attacked Shingai was Ren, with huge black wings and long red fingernails like Kurumu had in her true monster form…

But the instincts of a predator took over and Nigeki reached out to grab the thickest tree branch he saw. He stopped suddenly, but the branch snapped off a second later. The young vampire managed to land in an awkward crouch, and he looked around to locate the others, finding them already trading blows in the air above him.

“I tried to be nice, to just ignore it,” Ren yelled. “But pieces of crap like you just **had** to try something, just **had** to get a reaction out of me. Well, you wanted a reaction! **Here. It. IS!!!** ” Her eyes flashed and Nigeki instinctively looked away for the second it lasted, remembering all too well what a succubus’s charm had almost done to him. While Shingai was frozen Ren flew by him at incredible speed and raked her nails on both hands across his chest then slammed both of her feet into his abs knocking him back into the trees.

Ren landed beside Nigeki and checked him for blood. “Are you all right?” she asked, and he waved it off. “I’m fine.”

“You just fell out of the sky and landed in a tree!”

Before Nigeki was forced to answer her, another voice rang out. “Nigeki!! Are you out here?!” Running up was Moka, with Yukari right behind her and Mizore seeming to glide along the ground beside them. Moka cast an appraising eye at Ren, then examined Nigeki. “Are you okay? What happened?” she asked, sounding overly concerned as usual.

“This guy tried to attack Ren, so she kicked his butt. I mostly watched,” Nigeki answered her.

“What guy?” Yukari asked, then yelped in surprise and ducked as Shingai came flying back into sight, slicing through tree branches with the edges of his stony wings. He flew low, buzzing them, and Mizore fired ice daggers from her fingertips at his back as he shrank into the distance.

Shingai wheeled around and came back, and as he did Yukari raised her wand and one of her trademark washtubs fell from the sky and rebounded off his scalp with a clang. The angered gargoyle kept coming, and as he did Mizore blasted him with more ice slivers and Yukari planted her tiny feet and raised her wand again, buffeting Shingai with a barrage of cards.

But most of them just slid off Shingai’s thick hide and he came barreling into them. Mizore and Yukari jumped out of the way but Ren seemed to freeze for a second and Shingai lashed out with his taloned fingers, tearing at Ren’s blouse and skirt…

…and revealed a flat, masculine chest and blue boxer briefs underneath.

“What,” was all Nigeki could manage to say.

“You had no clue! **No freaking clue!** ” Shingai jeered as he landed, shielding himself with his wings as Yukari blasted him with cards again.

“I’m sorry you had to get involved in this,” Ren said to Nigeki then she… **he** spread his wings and tackled Shingai, raking his long fingernails across Shingai’s arms and chest harder than ever and sending sparks flying. But Shingai folded his wings around himself and threw them wide suddenly and forcefully, throwing Ren, Yukari and Mizore away. He jumped high and went diving at Ren.

“I’ll show you what **freaks** like you deserve!” he screamed. Ren made a sound halfway between a scream and a sigh of frustration as he planted his feet and grabbed Shingai’s wrists to keep the gargoyle’s taloned fingers away from his bare skin.

Nigeki stepped forward. He had no fighting skill; his family had refused to train him, afraid that by doing so he might be even more dangerous if the Tear took control of him. But he still had something that made up for that when an emergency presented itself, and he opened his mouth to call it.

But he gasped in surprise when he realized Moka had grabbed his hand and pressed it against her Rosario. “You need to save your blood! I’ll deal with this!” she cried out, and a spark passed between them, the Bloodstone belt appearing around Nigeki’s waist for just a second. The power of the two objects, one meant to amplify a monster’s power and the other to contain it, mixed. There was a flash and they were thrown apart.

When his vision cleared Nigeki saw a new Moka standing over him. The white-haired one whose stance projected unstoppable confidence. “Let me show you how a real vampire does it,” she said to Nigeki, then turned and took off at a run.

As Shingai shoved Ren down and grinned as he gained the upper hand, Moka came running up behind him, then as he swept his wing at her she jumped as if she’d seen the attack coming a mile away and. She came back down smashed her heel into his shoulders between his wings.

The gargoyle let out a strangled cry, staggered forward a few steps then whipped around and grabbed at Moka, who ducked under his arm and delivered a scissor-kick to his chin that knocked him flat on his back.

With a roar Shingai jumped back up, flailing his wings at Moka, who only gave him a dismissive sneer as she ducked and jumped over them with ease like she knew what he was doing before he did. Suddenly Moka planted one foot and threw a ferocious kick that hit Shingai on the chin and lifted him off the ground. She somersaulted into the air, landed behind him and delivered a spinning kick to his back that sent him cartwheeling drunkenly a few times before he crashed into a tree trunk, toppling it over. He slid to the bottom and didn’t get up again.

“You thought being a bully, a bigot made you strong,” Moka said with contempt. “Maybe now you’ll know your place.”

 

XXX

 

            Moka plucked the Rosario from Nigeki’s hand and gave him a probing look for a few seconds before sealing it on her choker again and reverting to her gentler self. He went over to make sure Ren was all right, and not sure just how deeply he was comfortable checking, when a pair of students in all-black outfits came running up. Members of the disciplinary committee, or the student police as they were known to some of their detractors.

Nigeki groaned inwardly as he recognized one of them, a muscular, busty girl with a long blonde ponytail who fixed him with a suspicious glare as soon as she spotted him. He recognized her even before he saw her name badge: C. Shianus. She’d tried to question him about a Kamen Rider sighting on campus.

“Just what’s going on here?” she demanded, taking in the sight of Ren with his uniform in tatters and Shingai lying unconscious against a half-splintered tree.

“That guy over there attacked him,” Nigeki replied, indicating Ren, who just held up a hand still sporting foot-long fingernails and waved weakly at Shianus. “We tried to stop him and…did.”

Shianus looked over at Moka, who was checking Yukari and Mizore to make sure they weren’t hurt. “Is that true?” Shianus demanded, casting a wary eye over her shoulder at Nigeki.

“It’s true!” Moka assured her. “We were just trying to help him out…”

Shianus motioned head toward Shingai and the other disciplinary committee member went over to secure the unconscious gargoyle. “I guess everything turned out all right then, but if something like this happens, **report it to us**. You’re here to learn how to blend in and live peacefully, remember?” she said, and giving Nigeki a warning looking in particular as they gathered up Shingai and led him away.

 

XXX

 

            “So…scary enough, you think?”

            Meroune gave a soft yelp of mock fear as she saw Nigeki in the first of the masks Ren had made for him, a shiny black facemask that had been covered across the top with a layer of red paint that looked almost like a sheet of dried blood. Mizore smiled softly around her lollipop in approval. Kurumu camera flashed and she grinned behind it, with Moka and Yukari looking on from behind, smiling gently themselves.

            “I guess that’s a vote of confidence,” Nigeki said, smiling as he took off the mask and handed it off to Ren, clad in a new female uniform.

            “Thank you, Hitoribo-san,” he said, cradling the mask in a hand that suddenly seemed oddly masculine now that Nigeki knew the truth about him, in spite of the purple nail polish. “You honestly didn’t know…about me? I thought everyone could tell.”

            Nigeki shrugged. “Honestly? This is the first time I’ve ever really been allowed out of the house. I guess I’m kind of clueless about other people and some of the things they might like to do.”

            “Like dressing up as girls?” Ren asked, a little suspiciously.

            “You didn’t try anything with me,” Nigeki pointed out. “I believe you thought I knew, and you weren’t trying to screw with my head or anything.”

            Ren smiled a little at that. “Thank you,” Ren said. “Shingai wasn’t the first person to give me a hard time over that. He was one of the meanest, though.”

            “Well, I’ve spent my entire life having it drilled into my head that I’m not supposed to hurt anyone,” Nigeki replied. “Since I’ve come to this school I’ve been thinking I should add as long as they don’t want to hurt anyone else. And I don’t think wearing a skirt counts as hurting anyone, even if it isn’t something I’d do.”

            “Well, guess I’ll get to work on something you will wear,” Ren said and walked off.

            The second her back was returned, Meroune wrapped her arms around Nigeki’s and looked up at him with a soft blush on her cheeks. “Speaking of wearing, why don’t you help me pick out my costume?”

            Then Mizore grabbed his other arm. “Maybe after he helps me pick out something to wear for the play,” she said quietly but with an undercurrent of menace.

            “But you’re on the stage crew,” Meroune said, surprised, and it was true; Miss Bast hadn’t failed to notice Mizore’s stealth skills, and she’d seemed happy enough to work on the play behind the scenes. Until now.

            Kurumu, always one to enjoy a little chaos, jumped forward and thrust her chest Nigeki. “Why don’t you ditch them and I’ll show you a couple **really** cute outfits?” she asked with a saucy grin.

            “Yeah, all over the floor!” Yukari jeered.

            “Who asked you, **kid**?” Kurumu snarled.

            “Hey, you guys—” Moka feebly tried to protest, while Meroune and Mizore kept pulling on Nigeki’s arms.

            Inwardly he sighed at this happening in spite of how he’d told them he wasn’t looking to date, but at the same time he couldn’t help smiling a little. It was chaos, but it wasn’t that different from what he’d imagined – hoped – school would be like. They fought with each other but when a real fight came along, they’d jumped in on his side.

            Because he was a friend.

 

XXX

 

**Maybe not my strongest chapter ever, but in a way I felt like it should’ve been included. The school’s meant to promote peaceful coexistence but that constantly gets forgotten in the name of shonen action scenes. I felt like a chapter should be done about that, but about something different than what usually makes a character “different”. In any case, hope it wasn’t that bad. The next chapter starts the buildup to the first climax.**

 

XXX

           

**Extra - Scrapped Ending for Chapter 6:**

 

_I decided not to use this because I thought it made Nigeki look sadistic, but here it is._

 

Kotsubo shut his eyes and tried to calm the storm of panicked thoughts swimming around in his head. Had he been found out, and they were keeping it from him for some reason? Or had it looked to them like he was some poor, innocent man who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and been discovered by a monster hunter who’d somehow gotten through the barrier? And what about that girl with the camera? What had happened to her? And what would she do with those pictures?

“Sensei? You okay?” someone asked, and Kotsubo opened his eyes to see a male student with short black hair and a concerned look on his face looking down at him.

“Who are you?” Kotsubo asked, his throat going dry.

The student looked back and forth over the rows of empty beds, and once he was sure they were alone he leaned down and whispered to Kostubo, “How about we play a game, sensei? Maybe you heard of it, it’s called ‘blackmail’.”

“You little punk…who do you think you are?” Kotsubo snarled.

“I think I’m someone with some friends you should worry about,” Nigeki answered him, his expression becoming dark. “Like one with some nice juicy photos of a teacher trying to take advantage of a student. If something happened to the guy who came to warn that teacher, then she might just go ahead and do something crazy like leak those. And if something happened to her, I can promise something a lot worse would happen to whoever was behind it. Get me, sensei? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe you’ll even enjoy seeing what it feels like to be totally at somebody’s mercy. And I bet you’ll think twice before you do it again.”

Kotsubo clenched his teeth in anger.

Nigeki smiled. “Great!” As he walked out the door he called, “Get well soon!” over his shoulder.


	8. Below Story

            From his window, Nigeki Hitoribo, teenage vampire, watched as a gaunt man walked past with an empty bag that a while before had held the students’ mail.

            He wanted to go down and check to see if anything had come for him, as rocky as his relationship with most of his family was. But as he walked over to the door to his dorm room and turned the knob, his skin prickled with a sensation of danger.

            There was plenty of reason to be cautious with all the fights he’d already managed to get into, with how many other students didn’t see any reason to be afraid of humankind and reveled in their powers. Nigeki, on the other hand, had grown up being warned constantly that there was something even darker and more monstrous in him than just being a vampire. That it could destroy everything around him if he didn’t keep it under control at all times. He’d had any desire to prove his strength squashed ages ago.

            But he’d had to anyway, hadn’t he?

A pair of students all in black, one of them leaning a long metal staff against her shoulder, walked past then. They were from the school’s disciplinary committee, and they’d been making a point to be seen these last couple of days. Nigeki supposed he didn’t blame them with what he looked like as Bloodstone.

            The armor, the mask the belt that was the source of his extra power, the strength that dwarfed even a monster’s…he hit all the warning signs of a Kamen Rider, the absolute symbol of humanity and how they responded to monsters. With aggression, with force, with no hesitation. Nigeki had been warned about the Kamen Riders, feared them the same as any monster who valued their life.

            But he wasn’t one. He didn’t want to kill monsters. He didn’t want to kill **anyone**. He’d lived in fear of doing that his whole life. The Bloodstone was to help hold that part of him **in**.

            Nigeki squinted hard and tried to head off all this downer thinking. He was at Youkai Academy to loosen up and make friends, so that would keep the Tear part of him down even more effectively.

After waiting another minute he decided he was just being paranoid and went downstairs to the entrance hall were the student mailboxes were set into the walls. Nigeki checked his mailbox and stared for a second in surprise when he saw there was indeed a thick envelope sitting inside with his family’s name and address on it.

            He thought about going back upstairs, but then decided to stay and read it to prove his feelings of being stalked were unfounded. Nigeki sat down out on the steps to his dorm, ripped open the end of the envelope and was about to pull out the envelope inside.

            “Whatcha doing?” asked a soft female voice that reached his ears before he noticed a girl had risen silently out of the bushes next to him. Nigeki squawked in surprise and jumped back before he recognized the long lavender hair and white stick of a lollipop sticking out of her mouth, which formed into a gentle smile of amusement as his butt hit the stairs awkwardly and he slid to the next one down.

            “Mizore…are you still following me around?” he asked in exasperation.

            “Uh huh,” she said, and then Nigeki realized his hand was empty, and the envelope he’d been about to open was in Mizore’s delicate hands instead. “What’s this?” Without waiting for an answer she pulled the contents free, spilling some photos onto the ground and picking them up.

            Nigeki jumped for them again, but Mizore deftly twisted out of the way and he landed in the dirt. “Oh, it’s a letter from your family,” Mizore observed as casually as could be.

            “Yes, it is. Could **I** maybe read it?” Nigeki asked, reaching out for it but again Mizore twisted to her side and he staggered past her.

            “After I’m done,” she stated plainly. But as she said that, another girl seemed to appear out of nowhere and snatched the photos out of her hand.

            “Who’s this?” asked the buxom blue-haired beauty, holding up a picture of a petite pale girl with pink streaks in her long black pigtails, and a heart-shaped birthmark under her left eye. “She your girlfriend from back home or something?” Kurumu asked, fixing Nigeki with a slightly suspicious gaze.

            Nigeki fumed. “That’s Laura. She’s a really distant cousin who stayed with us for a while when she was visiting Japan for some kind of exchange program.”

            Kurumu’s eyes narrowed even more suspiciously. “ **How** distant?”

            “That is **disgusting** ,” Nigeki said and snatched the pictures away from her before she could stop him. Kurumu had said exactly the kind of thing he’d been trying to avoid by bringing up the distance between his and Laura’s relation.

            “Hey!” Kurumu said indignantly.

            But Nigeki ignored the succubus’s protest and grabbed for the pages of his letter. Once again Mizore twirled out of his way as she read the letter, barely seeming to notice Nigeki as he landed face-first on the ground again. “I didn’t know your family was doing so many interesting things,” she murmured, only seeming barely aware that Nigeki was even there.

            Nigeki growled in annoyance but suddenly two pairs of arms grabbed him before he could try to grab his letter away from Mizore again. “Don’t!” Moka admonished him. “If you don’t control yourself…you-know-what will happen!”

            She tightened her embrace around her fellow vampire’s shoulders, and Yukari, the young witch, shut her eyes tight as she wrapped her arms around Nigeki’s waist.

            “Guys, I’m not that bad, honest,” Nigeki replied. “I just don’t think the drama with my family needs to be shared with everyone else.”

            “There’s no drama,” Mizore said, holding up the letter as proof. Nigeki sighed and took it away, and this time she let him.

            He glanced over the pages, then sat down to read them all the way through. As he flipped the second one back he noticed all four girls were sitting on the steps around him, reading over his shoulder.

            “What are you doing?”

            “Reading your letter,” Yukari answered for the group, as casually as anything. “I thought you said your older brother hated you. He sounds really nice.”

            “My **oldest** brother, Kai,” Nigeki corrected. “My other brother Mills is the one who wrote this. For some reason he’s willing to put up with me most of the time.”

            “ ‘…we’ve been making some breakthroughs in dad’s project to prove the existence of the Tears and he’s taking me to investigate some sites in Makai Realm with him. But the house seems weirdly empty with you away at school,’ ” Kurumu read. “Some reason, huh?” she smirked and gave Nigeki a playful poke in the ribs.

            “I guess,” he admitted. There was some more talk about casual things, about cousin Laura calling and asking where Nigeki was when she heard he was away, about her joining her school’s cheerleading squad and a new non-blood she was on. But when Nigeki flipped to the last page, the first paragraph read “Mom still isn’t doing well since Mei and—” but Nigeki folded the letter up and slipped it into his jacket.

            Before anyone could ask what else it had said another pair of students in black from the disciplinary committee walked by. “Is everything all right?” one of them asked. “We heard yelling and came over to see what happened.”

            “We were just playing around a little,” Moka immediately answered and gave them a sweet, innocent smile that would’ve charmed a statue. “Nothing serious.”

            “All right, but if you see anything unusual let us know. We’ve already had several injured students this year.” And then the two black-clad students walked on, but Nigeki swore one glanced at him suspiciously over one shoulder while going past.

            “I think I’ll finish this up on my own,” Nigeki muttered once the two of them were out of hearing range.

            “But we just got here,” Kurumu protested earning her looks of barely-veiled annoyance from Moka, Yukari and Mizore.

            “I’m sorry, but this is really personal, and not something I should be dragging my friends into.”

            “But isn’t that what friends do? Help each other with their problems?” Kurumu asked.

            “I appreciate it, but not with something like…this,” Nigeki answered. It was bad enough he’d attacked her when his Tear side took control of him, there was no need for them to start thinking they should join his family in looking for the source of those evil creatures and proving the danger the Tears presented to the monster world. They were just kids, it was better they enjoy their time at school without worrying about the danger his family was trying to prove existed. “I’ll see you later, guys,” he said, then hurried back into his dorm before they tried to stop him.

            Any other guy who looked at Nigeki’s situation would tell him he was crazy, he knew. Any of them would kill to have an almost entirely female circle of friends, especially with a bunch of beauties like the ones Nigeki had met since coming to this school. But even though he was feeling better about keeping his inner darkness in check than he ever had, but he was only testing the waters of the real world and having real friends for the first time in his life. He just wasn’t ready to get that involved with anyone. At least, not as involved as Kurumu wanted to be.

            All the same, he couldn’t help feeling glad about asking to be let out of the house to go to school with other monsters his own age. His experience wasn’t typical at all, but maybe…maybe he was meant to be here. Maybe there was more to Nigeki Hitoribo than the darkness within.

 

XXX

 

            “…w-w-well, why don’t we start on today’s lesson?” Miss Alphaisa half-whispered as she started the video she’d brought to class.

            She probably the most unassuming person Nigeki had seen since coming to Youkai Academy. Alphaisa was shorter than most of the students, chubby with a noticeable overbite and smelling slightly sweaty in every single class, and wearing the thicket glasses Nigeki could ever remember seeing. Her brown-blonde hair was pulled far back, spiking up at the ends in a way that made Nigeki think of the crest on a triceratops’s head.

            Miss Alphaisa was primarily a science teacher who’d been assigned on double-duty for a class on Introduction to Human Studies after the last one had suddenly and mysteriously vacated his position At least she didn’t seem like a homicidal maniac like he’d been. But then, that didn’t seem too uncommon trait at this school…

            His attention focused on the video as the familiar chords of the Mew Mew: Kissy Cutie theme song started to play. A scattered groan went up from around the classroom at another episode being examined, and out of the corner of his eye Nigeki saw Miss Alphaisa flinch. She had no trouble exploring the deeper meanings of this anime over the course of an entire class period, but even when one of the students had something to add, Miss Alphaisa had always thought of the exact same point but in much greater detail and would take off on the deeper meanings of snail ice cream and the significance of why a magic laser beam was yellow instead of green.

            “So…as we all remember from yesterday, Miyuki and Azusa had a fight over Takayuki,” Miss Alphaisa said, gleefully launching into her explanation of the animated show. “Now, Azusa felt bad about being so nasty to her friend, but before she had a chance to apologize, she ran into Ragnoroka, warrior for the Dark Empire!

            “Now, we can learn a lot about a culture form the way they tell their stories…,” Miss Alphaisa went on, but a snide voice interrupted her.

            “Yeah, we can learn how they trick people into buying dolls for their kids!” a boy somewhere across the classroom jeered, and a few other students laughed. Miss Alphaisa froze and her eyes seemed to swell until they took up half her face. Her jaw dropped and she quivered in place, as if taken completely aback to hear this kind of reaction to something she had such strong feelings about.

            Nigeki felt like he should do something to stop this, Miss Alphaisa seemed so helpless. But he was pushing it already with all the violence he found himself involved in since coming to school, wasn’t he? With the Student Police out in force looking for his alter ego and everything…

            Not to mention that after what he read in the latest letter from home, the part he hadn’t shared with his friends…he didn’t feel much like getting mixed up in violence with his classmates.

            After another minute the jeering laughter settled down, and Miss Alphaisa had managed to pick up her examination of the episode again. “…as you’ll remember from episode five, Takayuki thought about trying out for the soccer team but decided not to because he found his little brother was hit by a car, so instead he got an after school job to help pay for his brother’s treatment. Have any of you ever had to think about making a decision like that? Between something you really wanted, and something you needed?” she asked them. Nobody answered, and she scanned the class for a minute before seeming to lock on to Nigeki. “How about you?”

            “Me?” Nigeki sputtered, a chill reaching up his spine as he realized everyone in class was looking at him, Yukari and Kurumu seeming to look more at him even more deeply than the rest of the class. “I guess,” he finally replied. “When I wanted to come to school instead of studying at home. Technically it might be better since I’d be around my family, but here I’ve made a ton of friends already. I’ve hardly been out of the house before, but after what I just heard’s going on back home, maybe that’s…”

            “I think that’s enough,” Miss Alphaisa interrupted, wiping her suddenly sweaty brow. “And I’ll talk to you after classes are over, young man.”

            Nigeki groaned and again laughter broke out across the classroom, this time at him.

 

XXX

 

            A small cloud of steam escaped from the oven as Moka pulled the pie she’d been making out of the oven. Picking it up between her oven mitts she set it down on the pad laid out on the counter. She waited patiently for the Home Economics teacher, Mrs. Dreemurr, to come over and sample it along with the other girls’ work.

            “You did very well, Moka,” she praised the vampiress. “Rich, not too sweet. You checked your recipe a lot, though. There maybe somebody you want to impress with this…?” Mrs. Dreemurr asked with a slightly teasing smile.

            Moka blushed and avoided the teacher’s eyes. Mrs. Dreemurr was an almost suspiciously warm, caring person, like the mother she could barely remember. “Maybe,” Moka replied, not sure if she was more embarrassed that Mrs. Dreemurr had so easily guessed her secret or just praise from this teacher in particular. Mrs. Dreemurr was certainly one of the nicer instructors at this school Moka had met, and she’d started looking forward to this class as a result.

            The teacher gave Moka a gentle pat on the shoulder as she took another taste of the pie Moka made, something she hadn’t done when she’d sampled any other student’s pie.

            “Well, tell whoever this is for that it comes highly recommended,” Mrs. Dreemurr said and moved on to the next student’s culinary creation. The young vampire felt calm and appreciated. As the feeling set in it suddenly changed, and Moka looked at Mrs. Dreemur and felt herself wishing she could remember more about her mother…

 

XXX

 

            When Nigeki reported to Miss Alphaisa after class, he scanned her thoroughly as he walked up, looking for anything that might be a hidden weapon like the last time a teacher had given him punishment detail. But she was carrying nothing but the case for the DVD she’d shown the class earlier, and that was a weapon he’d already learned not to fear.

            “I’m here, sensei,” he said. “What do I need to do? We going to have some one-on-one going over what Mew Mew means?”

            “Only if you want to,” she answered, giving what Nigeki thought was supposed to be an encouraging smile. When it didn’t seem to work she opened the door behind her. “Why don’t you step into my office?”

            He did, and saw every open space of wall covered with wall scrolls of anime heroines, most of whom Nigeki didn’t recognize aside from the ones Miss Alphaisa had introduced him to in class. A row of figurines of more such characters were lined up in a neat row on the side of her desk touching the wall, and she reverently set her DVD into an empty spot on a shelf filled with matching cases.

            Then she took her seat at her desk and said, “You sounded like you had something really serious on your mind in class today.”

            “Is that something Human Studies teachers usually get involved with?” Nigeki said, sounding more surly than he’d meant to, but after what he’d heard about how things were at home he wasn’t in much of a mood to discuss it. Especially not with a teacher he barely knew.

            She flinched at his tone, but recovered quicker than she had in class. “No, it probably isn’t,” she answered, sweat forming on her brow anyway. “But…I’ve learned some harsh lessons in honesty and caring for others…Facing our problems instead of hiding them so they just get worse and worse. You seemed like you were facing some kind of trouble, so I thought maybe I should find out what if I could.”

            “It’s just some family stuff,” Nigeki replied.

            “What kind of family stuff?” she asked. “You made it sound pretty bad.”

            “I shouldn’t have said that,” Nigeki answered her. “I just started thinking about it and my mouth kind of took off without me.”

            But Miss Alphaisa waved her hand and smiled at him, although this ended up just making her overbite seem even bigger. “Look, I know how it usually is on TV where the teachers are the bad guys, but I’m here to help you out if you need it,” she said.

            “I guess it kind of is like an anime,” Nigeki murmured. Troubled loner on his own in a new place, soon finding himself the center of campus intrigue, but also finding himself the center of a loyal group of friends—

            “It is, isn’t it?” Alphaisa said dreamily, cutting off his line of thought. “A poor, shunned scientist finally escapes the confines of her nightmarish world with her friends into a world full of promise. She takes a job that seems demeaning, but finally lets her share the things she love with others. Obstacles crop up, but with the unconditional support of her loved ones she makes it through them all and becomes the most popular and—” She stopped as she saw the strange look Nigeki was giving her. “Right. I called you hear to talk about what’s bothering you.”

            “Well…if you really need to know, my mother hasn’t been doing well. I just got a letter from home, and she’s getting even worse. She won’t leave her room and she keeps banging on the walls and yelling for my youngest sisters. But they’ve been missing for weeks. We have no idea what happened to them,” Nigeki answered.

            By the time he stopped, he realized Miss Alphaisa was gaping at him in dismay. This was apparently a lot heavier than the answer she’d been expecting. She stared at Nigeki for another minute, then scuttled out from behind her desk and went to the door. “Would you wait here for a minute? I’ll be right back.”

 

XXX

 

            Mrs. Dreemurr was  on her way to the faculty housing at the end of the day, humming softly to herself. Working at a school after making it to the surface had been her ambition, even if it had been to start one of her own. But, there had been many surprises she’d discovered when she’d tried to integrate into surface society. It had been lucky, she’d discovered, to meet surface monsters before any other humans…

            “TOOOOOORRRRRIIII!”

            Mrs. Dreemurr turned as she heard the sharp cry of her old nickname cutting through the air. She turned toward it and saw Miss Alphaisa jogging up to her, already out of breath.

            “Oh,” Mrs. Dreemurr said, “It’s **you**.” She made no effort to disguise the disdain in her voice.

            Miss Alphaisa stopped in front of her, and kneeled forward gasping for breath for a minute before she could say anything to the disdainful Mrs. Dreemurr. “What is it, **doctor**?” Mrs. Dreemurr asked, sounding eager to get away from her.

            “I have…this boy…in my class,” Miss Alphaisa managed to gasp out. “He’s having some serious trouble at home, he said. I thought I’d come get you because you’re the one who’s good at this kind of thing.”

            “No, I’m not,” Mrs. Dreemurr retorted. “Remember all those jars you made for Mr. Dreemurr? The ones to put souls inside? None of that would have happened if I’d managed to talk them out of leaving the ruins.”

            “Tori, please,” Miss Alphaisa insisted. “I know you got a hundred reasons not to want to listen to me. But we want to make the world friendly for humans **and** monsters right, doesn’t that start with the people right here?”

            “Which of your ‘animes’ did you hear that from?” Mrs. Dreemurr said, but Miss Alphaisa just replied by giving her a helpless, puppy dog-eyed look. She sighed, then walked past Miss Alphaisa and gave her a resigned pat on the shoulder. “Where’s this boy of yours?”

 

XXX

 

            Nigeki almost jumped in surprise as he heard the door the office sliding open. There stood Miss Alphaisa, but in front of her was a voluptuous woman in a purple dress, who had thick curly white hair. Nigeki gulped as the sight of this woman, who he recognized as the faculty of the Cooking Club from the club drive a while back.

            He felt an urge to pull his bag in front of his waist as he examined the woman back. He’d met some real beauties since coming to Youkai Academy, but even compared to them this woman was in a league of her own. Nigeki found himself starting to believe some of those things his brother Mills had told him about the appeal of older women…experienced women…

            “You must be Nigeki Hitoribo. Is that right?” the woman asked, then extended her hand. “I’m Mrs. Dreemurr. Doctor…,” she paused and cast a look over her shoulder, squinting at the other teacher as if questioning some decision of hers. “… **Miss** Alphaisa was wondering if you felt like you could use someone to talk to about problems at home.”

            “I don’t really know…,” Nigeki started to protest, but Mrs. Dreemurr smiled gently at him and instantly all his resistance crumbled.

            “Are you sure?” she asked. “Ignoring these problems can distract from your studies.”

            “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Nigeki said, his throat dry.

            Mrs. Dreemurr’s smile warmed at his acceptance. “Maybe you’d care for some tea, then?” she asked as she walked away with Nigeki right on her heels. “Or perhaps some pie?”

            “I’ll take anything you’re offering,” he said, seeming only vaguely aware of his surroundings.

 

XXX

 

            Mrs. Dreemurr’s room was full of old books occupying every shelf, and flowerpots full of flourishing plants occupying almost every other surface. There was a fireplace in one wall, and in it a few logs crackled pleasantly even though Nigeki was sure there were no chimneys on the building where the faculty lived. Her bed was in the corner, and on the night table was an old brown vase full of especially bright yellow flowers with the biggest blooms Nigeki had ever seen.

            Next to the sink was a teapot, and to Nigeki’s surprise after Mrs. Dreemurr filled it with water she picked it up and pressed one hand against the bottom, and after a second steam started to escape from the spout. “I’ve found this to be faster,” she said with a smile.

            “What are you? An ifrit or something?” Nigeki blurted out, even though he, better than most people at Youkai Academy, knew he wasn’t supposed to ask other people their secrets.

            But Mrs. Dreemurr just smiled at him and shook her head. “I’m just someone who’s learned a thing or two. I suppose that’s why Doctor… **Miss** Alphaisa came to me.” She poured out two cups and sat down at the table off to side of the room, placed one before herself and then the other across from her for Nigeki. “Please, have a seat. Tell me all about this problem you’re having to deal with.”

            Nigeki sat down, and looked over at Mrs. Dreemurr, her expression patient as she waited for him to feel comfortable enough to open up. His problems with his family were the last thing he wanted to talk to her about, but after a minute he sighed and explained himself.

            “My mother and I’ve had a really rough relationship since I was born. She was terrified that something so ugly had grown inside of her,” he said and waved his hand when Mrs. Dreemurr canted her head questioningly. “It’s a long story and it’s bad enough I’m telling you anything else,” he explained.

            “My father and my oldest brother always told me she was never really the same after I was born. She was always so distracted and would cry sometimes when she looked at herself in the mirror for too long. After a while of that she started demanding that she and my father have another baby. I think she wanted to make sure I hadn’t contaminated her body or something. And after a while my father agreed, and they had twin girls.

            “But a while ago my little sisters just disappeared. We have no idea what happened to them, and my father and my brothers are involved in a big research project and can’t spare a lot of time to trying to find out. Honestly I think it’s one of the big reasons my father finally allowed me to study away from home…so I wouldn’t be around making my mother get even worse and interrupt their work.”

            Nigeki sighed and sucked down his entire cup of tea in one gulp. “She’s not well as it is. She keeps walking around the house calling for the girls and banging on the walls trying to get them to come and answer to her. And all that because seeing me sent her around the bend in the first place. My sisters were the only thing keeping her healthy.”

            Mrs. Dreemurr reached across the table and gently placed her warm hand over his, and gave him a soft, reassuring smile. “Family is one of the most intense things in our lives, Nigeki. I know that too, believe me,” she said. “I was in a very loving family myself, once.”

            “Once?” he asked. “Not anymore?”

            She shook her head, her smile fading just a little. “No, not anymore. Not for a long time, really. Would you care for some more tea?”

            “Well, do you think talking about it might help you, too?” Nigeki asked.

            “I’ve made my peace with it,” Mrs. Dreemurr replied. “But if you’d like to hear it, well, maybe it’ll help you…”

 

 

XXX

 

            She refilled their cups, and added a pinch of cinnamon to hers. “Would you care for some in yours?” she asked gently.

            He would’ve said yes if she’d asked him to eat raw blowfish, but he just nodded. Mrs. Dreemurr smiled again as she dropped a pinch of spice into his cup, and he picked it up and gave it a gentle swirl before taking his first sip. It felt like his first drink after a week in the desert.

            “I’m a monster, like yourself, I suppose that’s obvious,” she began. “But I don’t come from around here…I came from an underground world of sorts, where monsters were imprisoned by a barrier created by human wizards. In the time since, it seems magic-wielding folk become as welcome among humankind as monsters themselves.”

            “Not to mention among monsters, too,” Nigeki said. “I have a friend who’s a witch…she had a hard time settling in at school.”

            “That I have no trouble believing. It seems that if there’s anything humans and monsters have in common it’s distrusting those who are different,” Mrs. Dreemurr sighed. She took a long drink and studied Nigeki for a time before she went on, as if preparing herself for what she was going to say next. “But in spite of being trapped underground I used to have a very loving family,” she paused, then chuckled a little. “People have told me that my husband and I were insufferable back when we were together…”

            “What happened?” Nigeki blurted out.

            She sighed, but answered, “Our sons died. My **former** husband blamed humans, and swore to break free and not only destroy humankind but reclaim the surface for monsters, whatever the cost. He even sacrificed human children who were unlucky enough to find their way into our world to gather the power he would need to break through the barrier and lead our people back to the surface to take revenge.

            “But that’s the strangest thing,” she said, smiling a little. “The last human he would’ve needed to destroy the barrier and escape…traveled all across our world, befriending every monster he encountered. He never resorted to violence, and in the end, he destroyed the barrier and set us all free. Even my husband, who’d been so bent on destroying him.”

            “That’s…a little hard to believe,” Nigeki replied.

            Mrs. Dreemurr nodded, but replied, “And yet that’s the truth. This human came into our world where his death was the only thing that could set us free, and he helped us escape without once using violence against us. He was only a child…

            “I tried to force him to fight,” Mrs. Dreemurr went on, looking away for a second. “To save him from being killed like all the other humans before him. But he refused to raise his hand against me. Against any of us. My point is we all have problems, young one, some more severe than others. But solutions can come in the ways and times we least expect.”

            Nigeki nodded gently as he digested Mrs. Dreemurr’s story. “What happened to the human who saved you?”

            “Oh, he left to return to his own family,” she replied. “We still call each other sometimes. He’s trying to convince people that monsters exist and most want to coexist with humans, but he’s a little young yet for most people to be willing to believe his stories about a world of monsters.”

            Slowly, thoughtfully, Nigeki folded his hands in front of his face. “I don’t see why they’d think that. You know about the Kamen Riders, right? They’re just one type of monster hunter out there. And apparently the student police are worried about one of them even being on campus after what happened to Kotsubo.”

            But she shook her head in reply and smiled. “For all he accomplished, Frisk is a child. Children have many wild stories to tell, most of them not based in fact. I used to be a mother myself, didn’t I? As for a monster hunter being on campus, if that were true, why would he have simply beaten a monster and run away when confronted? Don’t these Kamen Riders fight to the death?” She reached across the table and gently took Nigeki’s hand. “Things probably aren’t as dark and bleak as you’re thinking. Not if we’re willing look for the good in things and make them better. Frisk did.”

           

            XXX

 

            They sat there until the teapot was empty, Mrs. Dreemurr seeming content to have said her piece and let Nigeki decide what he’d make of it. He sat at her table in silence, just letting everything he’d been thinking lately and what she’d said to him about her experiences.

            Suddenly Mrs. Dreemurr cleared her throat. “Pardon me, but as a student, you probably know about this…”

            Nigeki canted his head. “Know about what?”

            “Well…,” Mrs. Dreemurr trailed off, and blushed faintly. “The students have this really popular joke where they come up and ask if I’m single. But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say and I usually just tell them that’s adorable, then they blush and run away.”

            “Why do you think they’re joking?” Nigeki asked, wondering about the answer to her relationship status himself. She’d said she used to be married. She wasn’t anymore then, right? And why did he wish she wasn’t?

            “Because even girls have asked me,” Mrs. Dreemurr replied. “Maybe you can tell me, what am I supposed to say to them when they ask that?”

            Nigeki choked. He wanted to say she should tell them she was sorry but she was already dating a student, then mentally kicked himself for having such a ridiculous, inappropriate thought.

            But he couldn’t help it. Mrs. Dreemurr was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, and he’d become friends with some real beauties since his family finally let him out of the house. There was something more to Mrs. Dreemurr, though…

            Like she’d been through so much, but had weathered it all with a serene nature whose strength Nigeki could only try to imagine, and feel jealous for not having it himself. She was nothing like any of the other teachers he’d met at this school; she actually seemed interested in him as a person, and didn’t seem like a ditz or do anything to make Nigeki wonder if she was some kind of nutjob just waiting for something to set her off.

            “I…,” he started to say, considering his words carefully. “I think maybe they’re serious,” he finally blurted out, seeming to have no sense of control around this teacher.

            Mrs. Dreemurr just looked at him for a minute without an expression on her face, then smiled faintly. “I suppose it’s not uncommon for children to have a crush on a teacher,” she said simply.

            “I believe that,” Nigeki said without thinking once again. He clapped a hand over his mouth, but Mrs. Dreemurr still looked unfazed. In fact she reached across the table and lightly pinched his cheek.

            “That’s adorable,” she said, then added, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.”

            “I know what that’s like too,” she said, and pinched his other cheek, smirking a little this time. Part of Nigeki told him he should be annoyed by that, but another, louder part of his mind told him to be flattered a beautiful woman was paying attention to him, even if she was doing something as lame as pinching his cheeks.

            “I should probably get going,” Nigeki said. “It’s getting kind of late.”

            “Are you sure you don’t want to wait a little bit?”

            He knitted his brow. “Why would I need to wait a little bit?”

            “You’re blushing like crazy. Your face is as red as an apple,” Mrs. Dreemurr replied, smiling in gentle amusement. Nigeki got up and dashed to the mirror over the sink, and huffed in annoyance when he saw she wasn’t kidding, his face really was a bright red.

            “I’m going to go now,” Nigeki said, completely flustered, and almost tore the door off its hinges as he hurried out.

 

            XXX

 

            Nigeki didn’t stopped until he was sure he was out of sight of Mrs. Dreemurr’s building. What an idiot he’d been! Saying all those stupid things and getting ideas…him and the rest of the students at this school, it sounded like, and she just thought they were acting cute by confessing their attraction to her.

            Had all the girls he’d met at school already gone to his head, so that when another beauty came his way Nigeki thought she’d be interested in him too? Maybe even find all those stupid things he’d said without thinking charming?

            He had to admit, part of him honestly thought she would. What was wrong with him? He was supposed to be getting involved at school, but not involved like **that**.

            Suddenly he froze as he realized he wasn’t alone; a pair of student police members in black were patrolling nearby. As they noticed him in return, however, they didn’t keep walking past. Instead they walked over to the young vampire.

            “Can I help you guys?” he asked, sounding more suspicious than he’d meant. Still recovering from Mrs. Dreemurr’s influence, it seemed like.

            “What are you doing out here by the faculty housing by yourself so late?” asked one of them.

            “I…was having a conference with one of my teachers,” Nigeki answered.

            “Oh, is that right?” asked one of them. “And it’s just coincidence that a student was found beaten not far away from here a little while ago, claiming some kind of…Kamen Rider was the one who did it to him.”

            Nigeki froze, but tried not to let his nervousness show. “And what does that have to do with me?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

            “You sure look like a student who was seen nearby a few weird incidents where students got beaten up,” one of the officers said, grinning a little. “Maybe you’d better come with us…”

            Nigeki tensed his muscles. He knew better than to be getting into fights, let alone with the disciplinary committee, but after the bad news from his brother and humiliating himself in front of Mrs. Dreemurr he wasn’t thinking as straight as he should’ve been. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not going anywhere.”

            “We weren’t asking,” said one, who suddenly swung a giant fist at Nigeki’s stomach. Nigeki tried to dodge, his predatory instincts warning him, but the boy suddenly launched a kick that caught Nigeki hard in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him.

            The second boy slammed his elbow down between Nigeki’s shoulders and the young vampire went sprawling. Even through the haze of pain he quickly realized what a bad idea this had been; Nigeki had never been taught to fight. His family had always worried that if the Tear side took over it would just make him that much more dangerous. But as the second boy grabbed him by the wrists and pinned them behind his back before the first attacker rushed up and slammed his fist into Nigeki’s stomach, it was clear these two knew **a lot** about fighting.

            Nigeki struggled and the police member in front pounded the bottom of his fist into the side of Nigeki’s head. Everything exploded with stars for a second, and the boy appeared to have been waiting for Nigeki to recover before he asked with a grin, “Ready to come with us now?”

            “I haven’t done anything,” Nigeki insisted, not wanting to give them another reason to pound him but afraid that if they took him in that somehow they might find his belt, and that would be the end of him, he was sure.

            “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you? C’mon, let’s see what Kuyou thinks of him.”

            “What in the hell is going on here?” someone demanded, and it took Nigeki’s dazed mind a second to recognize the voice of Mrs. Dreemurr, who was glaring angrily at the scene in front of her.

            “We just caught a suspect in an attack on a fellow student, ma’am,” the boy pinning Nigeki answered. “We were going to take him in for questioning.”

            Mrs. Dreemurr’s eyes smoldered angrily and the boy nearly let Nigeki go. “An attack? He was talking to me for the last **hour**. Who is he supposed to have attacked??” she demanded.

            “He’s been nearby when other incidents have taken place,” the one pinning Nigeki answered. “It’s a serious matter for campus security.”

            Mrs. Dreemurr’s eyes narrowed angrily. “He wasn’t attacking anyone, and I won’t let you take him anywhere,” she warned.

            He shoved Nigeki to the ground and his skin started to creak. “Well, then no disrespect ma’am, but…” His height nearly doubled and his skin took on a dull sheen like stone, except for the white gleam of a confident smirk as he pounded one fist into the other with a dull boom.

            But Mrs. Dreemurr look completely unimpressed by the sight of the golem towering over her. A soft coat of white fur quickly covered her skin as she assumed her true form too, her ears drooping until they hung to her shoulders and two tiny curved horns sprouted from her head. Her face had shifted into something like a goat’s. A very annoyed-looking goat.

            “You know what I see here?” she asked the golem. “A child who needs a spanking.”

            The golem sputtered in anger at the remark, and lunged at Mrs. Dreemurr. She easily jumped out of his way, then held up one hand a barrage of tiny fireballs ripped from her hand and hit him in the back, blasting him thirty feet through the air before he landed in a heap, a stunned expression on his face.

            “Shit,” the other policeman hissed, then seemed to explode into a ball of shaggy gray fur. He was almost as tall as his cohort, and the temperature seemed to plummet as soon as he’d completed the transformation to his true form. A yeti, looked like. He brought up a fist the size of Nigeki’s whole torso and smashed him into the ground with it before he ran off to join his friend fighting Mrs. Dreemurr.

            Nigeki didn’t see which way he went; the young vampire was concerned only with the blinding pain from the blow he’d taken. It felt like a few ribs had been broken, and it was all Nigeki could do to gather the willpower to resist the Tear inside him as he felt it grabbed onto his pain and growing stronger.

            Desperately he rolled onto his back and crawled for the cover of trees just off the path as Mrs. Dreemurr made the yeti jump back with a burst of fire from her fingertips. No one’s eyes were on him, and Nigeki forced himself completely out of sight between the trees, crawling for what felt like forever before he let himself drop to the ground, and hiss one word.

            “ **Henshin!** ”

 

XXX

 

            The two young monsters circled around Mrs. Dreemurr and every few seconds she dodged as one of them took a swing at her.

            “Teachers aren’t exempt from the rules!” the golem grunted. “Surrender and make it easier on yourself.”

            “You attack, and **then** you offer peace,” Mrs. Dreemurr said without emotion. “And you wonder why you have to hide from humans.”

            “We don’t have to explain ourselves to you. A Kamen Rider’s on campus, the captain’s trying to avoid a panic by not announcing an emergency!”

            Mrs. Dreemurr fixed him with a cold gaze. “This captain of yours sounds so noble…you almost sound like you believe what he’s said.”

            The golem scowled. “He’ll be even happier with us for catching another conspirator,” He said and jumped at her, trying to grab her shoulders, but she spun out from between his hands and gave a flash of light from her fingers right in his face. The golem screamed and clutched at his eyes, staggering around until Mrs. Dreemurr stuck out her foot and tripped him.

            The yeti bellowed and grabbed her suddenly by the arm, just before someone grabbed **him** by the arm and pulled him away from her.

            “Brainless scum,” hissed the new combatant angrily, a figure in black armor crossed with throbbing red veins and a skull-like mask. He shoved the yeti back then executed a fierce scissor-kick connecting his boot with the monster’s chin, knocking him off-balance. Then, less venomously, he said, “You wanted to find me, here I am. And I won’t let you attack her again. **I’m** the one with the worthless life…”

            The yeti grunted. He hesitated for a second, seeming unsure of his power for a second in the face of what did indeed seem to be an actual Kamen Rider facing him down, asking for a fight. Then suddenly there was a thundering footstep and the golem came running up, and kicked Bloodstone into the air.

            “Yes, you are! Miserable monster killer!” the golem yelled, but screamed in pain as Mrs. Dreemurr blasted him across the shoulder with a fireball.

            “No one is worthless,” she said quietly.

            “I bet all you Kamen Riders and your friends tell yourselves that!” the golem roared and brought up a giant hand to slam down on Mrs. Dreemurr. “Whatever helps you justify all the lives you take!”

            In the air, Bloodstone angled himself to land on his feet as he started coming back down again. He could see the yeti charging up, frost already forming on the ends of its fingers. Bloodstone landed hard and his glowing eyes focused on the yeti.

            For a second, he saw only a hulking beast. Another stupid brute who thought their power compared to his. Another pathetic opponent to conquer.

            But then…his mind seemed to clear. The yeti was towering over him as he angrily linked his fists together and swung them both at Bloodstone, who braced himself and raised his arms to shield himself from the powerful punch. His arms exploded with pain, but after a second it faded, and he started pushing back.

He wasn’t a monster killer. He had used this power to defend himself and his friends. That’s what he’d keep doing with it…no matter what happened to him.

            “Stop this,” Bloodstone managed to moan. “I’m not here to kill you, or anybody. I’m a monster like anyone else here.”

            “You’re damn right you are!” the yeti roared. He grabbed Bloodstone by the wrists and swung him over his head, slamming Bloodstone hard against the ground. The yeti lifted his hands above his head and a block of ice the size of Bloodstone’s body formed in them, and he smashed it down on top of Bloodstone with all of his awesome strength.

            The ice shattered, but even with his armor protecting him pain washed over Bloodstone’s entire body again, and he was sure he felt the rest of his ribs cracking. Transformed as he was he would heal from it quickly, but only if his opponent didn’t beat him faster than he could heal.

            He hated to feed the stereotype, but if he didn’t defend himself, he was going to die…and perhaps for the first time, he realized he wasn’t ready to do that.

            “ **Blood Star!** ” the Bloodstone itself said as the yeti readied another ice block. The armor around his right arm flowed out suddenly, forming a shape like a whip, and the end swelled, sprouting spikes. It had become a mace. Another huge ice block came hurtling down toward him, and Bloodstone lashed out with his new weapon, shattering it to glittering pieces. With his free hand Bloodstone grabbed the yeti by the ankle and yanked him off his feet.

            The yeti grabbed Bloodstone as he fell and they battered each other with their fists. Bloodstone gritted his teeth as a flurry of huge punches connected with his aching ribs, but Bloodstone was the one who had a weapon and he managed to deliver a blow to his enemy’s head that dazed him for the second Bloodstone needed to jump away from him.

            “ **Black Morpheus Shock!** ” the belt spoke, and Bloodstone clenched his teeth behind his mask as his power intensified, racing over his body and seeming to stay as long as possible over his aching ribcage. Besides the pain this was an unrefined attack; Bloodstone’s powers were meant to fight and conquer, not just render his enemies helpless. He had to land it just right or nothing would happen at all.

            The yeti grunted in fear as he saw what Bloodstone was doing and focused his own powers, shooting chunks of ice. They were huge, jagged bullets, nothing like the elegant icy daggers Nigeki had seen Mizore shape with her power. But the yeti was afraid; Bloodstone could smell it. He thought he was in a fight for his life.

            Bloodstone was happy to prove him wrong.

            He swung at the incoming ice barrage with his mace-hand and smashed them pieces, then crouched and jumped into the air and aimed himself at the yeti. As his fist connected with the shaggy monster’s chest arcs of red power spread across the yeti’s body. A cry of pain died in the yeti’s throat as his knees buckled and he slumped to the ground with a crash.

            Cautiously Bloodstone rolled the monster onto his back, but needn’t have bothered; a long snarling sound came from the yeti’s hairy face, and after another one came a second later Bloodstone realized it was a snore. His power had knocked his hulking enemy out.

            A second later there was a crackling sound like fire, a cry of pain and the golem came flying out of the trees to land not far away, breathing but unmoving like his friend. It looked like Mrs. Dreemurr hadn’t had any trouble with her opponent.

            There was yet another thing about her that amazed him.

 

XXX

 

            After he’d reverted to normal, Nigeki found Mrs. Dreemurr, in her human disguise once again, standing on a cliff looking out over the red ocean. In the distance, the sun was setting.

            “Not to be rude or anything, but you take that for granted,” she said gently without turning around.

            “Sunset?”

            She nodded. “I lived in caves my entire life…but monsters on the surface, humans…it seems like most of them can look at this and see nothing at all.”

            “It’s beautiful,” Nigeki admitted. “I should probably enjoy it while I can…after that fight I’m gonna get thrown out of school for sure. If I don’t get lynched.”

            She turned to look down at him. “You didn’t listen at all, did you?” she asked, but gently. “The world’s not as bleak as we make it seem. What did you do wrong that you’re afraid of being punished for? Are you one of those Kamen Riders who’s here to kill the student body and make the world a safer place for your kind?”

            “Of course not! I’m a monster too! And I didn’t kill that guy! I only knocked him out!”

            Mrs. Dreemurr smiled. “Then maybe you can try to have a little more faith that things will happen for the best.”

            “They have to know I’m Bloodstone after that, with me not killing them…but I couldn’t kill them. I don’t see how that’s going to work out for the best.”

            “I didn’t see how a child was going to survive travel across a world of monsters,” Mrs. Dreemurr replied. “But he did, and he freed us all.” She took his hand and gave him a smile Nigeki didn’t quite recognize, but after a second he decided it looked…

            …motherly.

 

Xxx

 

**Well, that was fun to write. In case it wasn’t clear, I’m going by the pacifist ending, with the change that the monsters from the game emerged into a world that already had a sizable monster population who live in hiding from humans for obvious reasons. They’re a little radical for trying to propose that they meet and coexist with humans, but there’s a lot of resistance for them to overcome.**

**As for Nigeki’s American cousin, if you still remember that, I shortened her name from the source material to sound a little less ridiculous in a slightly less silly story.  
**

**Hope you enjoyed!**


	9. Questions of Self

            He’d been a little unsure about the new recruits, but the sickening *CRACK* that split the air as one of them slammed a foot into the student two others held between them, made him smile a sadistic little smile. They’d been learning his lieutenants’ lessons well after all.

            He stepped closer to the rest of the club, who cowered pathetically against the side of the school building, looking like they were hoping they could disappear through the wall and escape him. But he focused his piercing gaze on them and smirked nastily. There was no escape and they knew it; the students at this school played by his rules, or they became an example.

            “Please, sir,” whined one girl whose cheeks were streaked with tears. “We raised everything we possibly could, but—”

            She stopped as he stepped forward and stood right in front of her, towering over her and the rest of her club members. He looked every bit the captain of the Student Police that he was with a tall, athletic build. His long blond hair framed a face that was both majestic and intimidating.

            “Oh, I know,” he said with mock understanding. “You’ve always paid us what we asked for us. To be honest I’ve always had the least trouble with your little group. But haven’t you heard? There’s a Kamen Rider on campus! You’ve heard of them, haven’t you? Of course you have…”

            A moment passed as he let the weight of his declaration sink in. The club’s president sobbed helplessly.

            “They’re one of the most ruthless and dangerous types of monster hunter. You’ve got to expect rates to increase when the danger does, don’t you? My people are taking an awful risk on your behalf!” he stated. The he touched the tip to her chin, and raised her face to meet his eyes. “We’re here to keep you safe, but we need all of you to do your part too. Otherwise…well, do **you** want to be on the receiving end of one of those kicks of theirs?”

            He stared into her eyes for a second, the veiled threat in his gaze contrasting with the gentlemanly smile on his face.

            “All right, Kuyou…,” she gasped after a minute. “We’ll get it by tomorrow. I promise.”

            “Excellent!” he smiled, but then turned and nodded to his subordinates who gave the poor student trapped between two other Student Police members one last hard kick in the ribs. The ones who’d been holding his arms shoved him onto the ground, one stepping on him as Kuyou collected his people and left the cowering students behind.

            When they were far enough away that the students wouldn’t hear them, one girl walked over to Kuyou’s side. “We let them off easy…when was the last time we gave someone extra time?”

            “Deshi, you disappoint me,” Kuyou sighed. “One of our own confirmed the presence of a Kamen Rider on campus…lost a fight to them himself, remember?”

            “Yes, I do,” she answered, eyes narrowing. “Because the Kamen Rider hit him and knocked him out so that he was still alive to tell us. Since when do Kamen Riders leave monsters alive?”

            “Perhaps when he’s a monster himself, as we have strong reason to believe,” Kuyou replied. “But we can find out for sure when he’s in custody. It’s all a matter of finding the right time.”

            The girl scowled; usually Kuyou just let them do whatever they wanted, there was none of this… _caution_. It took her a few seconds to even recognize that was the right word to describe the way he was acting, since she’d never seen anything but his overpowering confidence. And why not? The Student Police were the strongest monsters on campus, and he was the strongest of them all. Who could possibly threaten him?

As far as she was concerned, that idiot who’d said he’d run into a Kamen Rider was just taking advantage of the rumors to explain how he’d let the student he was supposed to bring in get away from him. Who ever heard ofa Kamen Rider who let his opponents escape with their lives? Deshi had heard about them since she a child, just like any monster had. Kamen Riders never let their prey get away. They probably didn’t come after monster children for not brushing their teeth, but Kamen Riders killed monsters, and that was a fact.

A Kamen Rider who **was** a monster, though? That made no sense at all. They were the ultimate symbol of humankind’s hatred toward monsters…

But as she was thinking that a glint of light from the top of the building they were walking by caught her eye, and as stealthily as possible she nudged Kuyou and lightly pointed upward with the staff in her hand to let him know she’d seen something.

He only smiled and glanced at the building across from the source of the glint, which was the girls’ dorms. They could both see a female student in one window as she finished changing out of her school uniform.

            “No need to worry about him,” Kuyou said. “He already knows better than to start anything with us.”

 

XXX

 

            A hand slipped between the doors of the Youkai Academy student theater and slipped a sign over one knob: “REHEARSALS IN PROGRESS – KEEP OUT”.

            Up on the stage, the Drama Club had broken into pairs and small groups, each going over a scene. Near the center stood a tall, athletic-looking boy with dark hair and a slightly dark tinge to his skin, Enrique Sakamoto. And opposite him was a lithe girl with long, pale pink hair who somehow managed to make the wheelchair she sat in look majestic, Meroune Lorelei.

            Slowly and passionately, she recited, “…Father said, ‘When I’m in heaven, my child, I will send the Angel of Music to you.’ Well, Father is dead, Raoul, and I have been visited by the Angel of Music.”

            Enrique stared at her for a second, captivated by her, before she started to give him a confused expression, and he remembered he was supposed to say something back. “No doubt of it!” he exclaimed, and Meroune actually flinched for a second at the strength of his voice. He blushed and went on, more quietly, “And now, we’ll go to supper.”

            “No, Raoul. The Angel of Music is very strict,” Meroune protested gently, her face a mask of concern that fit her part perfectly.

            “I won’t keep you late!” Enrique said, keeping his voice under control this time.

            “No, Raoul…” Meroune replied, and their scene went on.

            A few feet away sat Nigeki Hitoribo, who was waiting for them to finish up since most of his scenes were interacting with Meroune’s character, the play’s heroine. He was starting to wonder if that had been her real reason for trying out for the part of Christine Daae.

With Meroune, like most of the girls he’d made friends with at this school, it didn’t seem to register to anyone else that this was the first time he’d ever been allowed out of the house on his own and wasn’t worrying about dating yet. If it worked out it might bury the Tear part of him for a long time, but he was afraid if it **didn’t** , even with the control he’d gained since coming to school, the Tear might bury **him** forever.

            “Hitoribo-san? Are you ready?” Meroune asked. “It’s going to be you and me next.”

            “I’m afraid it isn’t,” said Miss Bast, the club’s faculty advisor, as she walked in, her thick blue hair swaying behind her. She gave Nigeki a glare of annoyance. “It seems as if as our young friend has some concerned friends of his own. **So** concerned they felt they had to ignore the sign on the door and make absolutely sure everything was all right with him.”

            Nigeki’s stomach clenched like a fist for a second, sure it was the Student Police come to haul him in on suspicion of being the Kamen Rider stalking the campus, but his fear faded when he saw the first of them.

            It was a willowy girl with a ribbon of pink hair hanging down her back. Moka Akashiya, Nigeki’s fellow vampire that he hadn’t seen much since they’d joined different school clubs. Her usual friendly smile was gone, replaced by a look of anxiety.

            As Nigeki spotted her, though, he spotted another familiar figure behind her. She wore a purple dress and her curly white hair still looked almost fur. It was Mrs. Dreemurr, who’d stood up to members of the Student Police along with him the night before. Before she’d just seemed like a kind and motherly woman, but after seeing her casually dealing with her opponent last night, Nigeki was prepared to believe her claims that she’d been a ruler once.

            Miss Bast leaned over Nigeki and quietly said, “Are you in trouble for something?”

            “No,” Nigeki replied out of instinct, but Miss Bast looked unconvinced.

            “Look, Hitoribo-san,” she said gently. “You’re here to learn to be a peaceful person so you and all the kids like you can stay safe. If for some reason you’re having trouble with that, you need to let your teachers know. We’re here to help you.”

            Nigeki looked up at her, his instincts again telling him to stay silent. He was supposed to be keeping his dark half a secret, staying out of trouble and making friends at a normal school. It wasn’t honest of him, but without Nigeki around causing friction with his father and older brother his family was free to find proof of the existence of the Tears they could present to the leaders of the monster world. Soon, hopefully, something could be done about them.

            Not only that, but he’d managed to do some good with the people he’d met here, the friends he’d made. Kurumu wasn’t hypnotizing boys anymore, Meroune had been able to get away from the bullying mermaids, and Mizore, well, she was out of trouble too. Yukari, Ren…

            If Nigeki admitted to anything, he didn’t see how he couldn’t admit to it all. And if he did, then he’d be thrown out of Youkai Academy for sure. He worried that all the progress his friends had made in confronting their demons might slip away. If he was sent back to his family, their work on finding proof of the Tears might slow down again. And, he wondered for a terrible second, what if his family wouldn’t take him back?

            Kai had said again and again they should’ve gotten rid of him the minute their mother first laid eyes on his black-coated form. One night when Kai was especially angry he promised he’d toast Nigeki being kicked out of the family on the day of his wedding. And with how close Kai and his fiancée seemed to be…

            “Hey!” Miss Bast interrupted him. “You don’t have to say anything now, but at least think about it, okay?”

            “Okay, okay.”

            “All right. Now go see what your friends need. We have a production to put on, don’t forget.”

            He gave her a questioning look. “You sound really serious about it.”

            “Everyone’s coming to see you put on a show, you **better** take it seriously,” Miss Bast answered, and Nigeki had the feeling the grim expression on her face wasn’t meant to be as silly as it looked.

            “I understand, Bast-sensei,” Nigeki said, then slipped away from her to see what Mrs. Dreemurr and Moka needed, although he was sure he already knew. Moka looked up at Mrs. Dreemurr a little nervously, but the teacher nodded slowly and she nodded back. “Is there…anything I can do for you, Dreemurr-sensei?” Nigeki asked.

            “Came to see if you’re…all right, after yesterday,” she answered, giving him a neutral expression, but as he met her eyes Nigeki noticed a glint he thought must’ve been concern for him. It had been a long time since he’d seen it at home. “Looks like I wasn’t the only one,” she went on.

            Nigeki sighed. “For now, at least.”

            Moka’s jaw dropped in alarm. “What are you talking about?”

            “It’s…I…I got into a fight with  this guy from the Security Committee yesterday,” Nigeki explained in a lowered voice. “I got smacked really hard and had to change. I got out of sight, but I’m pretty sure he knows it was me. Don’t see how he couldn’t. I’m sure they’re thinking of some kind of plan to catch me, and I’m trying to think about what I should do...maybe I should leave school before they try to get me.”

            “No!” Moka exclaimed, and students all around the theater turned and looked her way. She blushed a little and tried to wave it off. “Sorry everybody…”

            “ _This weakling calls himself a vampire?_ ” Moka flinched in surprise as she heard the voice of her stronger inner self speak in a voice only she heard.

            Moka was about to think of a sharp reply when her thoughts were interrupted. “Let me ask you again, why should you do anything?” Mrs. Dreemurr asked, and both students looked up at her in confusion. “What have you done wrong that someone’s going to punish you for?”

            “I don’t think it’s going to matter what I’ve actually done,” Nigeki muttered. “When I change I look like a monster-killer, right in the middle of a bunch of monster kids. If I was them I wouldn’t wait to pull the trigger either.”

            Moka tried to think of something reassuring to say, but Mrs. Dreemurr already had. “Has this monster-killer actually killed any monsters? Giving up a bit too soon, wouldn’t you say?”

            “Dreemurr-sensei, I appreciate you trying to help me, but you’re not from around here. You don’t know about all the kinds of monster hunters there are, and how serious it is for us if one shows up around here.”

            “Perhaps it’s time to change that, then,” Mrs. Dreemurr replied calmly. Gently she cupped Nigeki’s cheeks in her arm, soft, enticing hands. For a second he couldn’t think of anything else. “One person ended a long period of confinement and fear. It took determination, but he did it. That could happen again, somewhere else, seems to me, if someone else had…well, **determination**. Think about it, young one.”

            Mrs. Dreemurr held his face in her hands for another second then gently stepped away. She walked out of the theater, looking over her shoulder back at Nigeki for a second with a slightly questioning look before she turned away and walked through the door.

            Moka watched her leave too, then after a second realized she was there to tell Nigeki something important too. “Hi,” she said gently and took Nigeki by the hand, giving him a warm, slightly embarrassed smile. “Can you meet me at my club after your club ends? I really need some help…”

 

XXX

 

            Moka was waiting out on the path in front of the building where the Newspaper Club met, pacing back and forth. She looked up uncertainly as another student came into sight, then her face brightened when she recognized him.

            Though her face fell again when she saw he wasn’t alone. Nigeki was there, but next to him was Meroune Lorelei in her wheelchair, a pleasant smile on her face. A faint chill in the air as the two of them came closer hinted they weren’t the only ones.

            “Thanks for coming,” Moka said and took Nigeki’s hand between hers. She sighed softly and he swore her cheeks turned pink for a second. “I was kind of hoping you’d come yourself, though,” she said to Nigeki in a lowered voice.

            “That’s what I tried to tell her,” Nigeki replied. “But Mero-chan asked if I could walk her home after the club let out. Said all the Student Police around are making her nervous. And when she heard I needed to come help out a friend, she said she wanted to help too.”

            Meroune smiled and slipped her arms around Nigeki’s other arm. “Yes, exactly!” she exclaimed. “It’s so tragic, all this trouble at an ordinary school, but perhaps the calamity will draw them together…”

            Moka stared down at her for a second, then whispered in Nigeki’s ear, “What’s she talking about?”

            “I think she wants school to be like a romance novel or something,” Nigeki whispered.

            A second passed as Moka digested what he’d told her. “A romance novel with her…and **you**?”

            Nigeki shrugged helplessly.

            “Okay, let’s just go in,” Moka said. “And try not to judge him **too** hard, all right?”

            “Judge him for what?” Nigeki asked.

            How had Nigeki gotten a reputation as someone willing to plunge into danger? He was supposed to be at a regular school making friends and learning to **stay out** of trouble. But not only was Nigeki pretty sure Mrs. Dreemurr had been trying to hint he should be willing to make more of what he had with the Bloodstone, Moka had said her club president was in some kind of trouble and come to Nigeki in hope of dealing with it.

            There were only two blood bags hidden in the bottom of his closet now. He got into one more fight, used his Bloodstone powers for anything big or healed from a serious injury again, it would all be gone. And to have any hope of getting more he’d have to tell his family that he was out, and why he’d run out so soon…

            But then, that was what meant having friends meant sometimes, didn’t it? Being there to help if they needed it, and making friends was what he was at school to do, wasn’t it?

            Moka opened the door, then jumped with a squeal of surprise as someone came flying out and crashed into Nigeki and they both landed in a heap. For just a second Nigeki could feel the Tear flaring up but he fought it down and shoved the other student off of him.

            It was a dark-haired boy wearing a silver pendant shaped like a wolf’s head, but Nigeki’s attention was drawn more to the dark shoe print ground into the back of his head. He didn’t have to guess where that had come from, with an extremely annoyed-looking Kurumu standing in the doorway, arms crossed under her chest, an annoyed Yukari by her side. A second later a metal wash tub fell from the sky, and Yukari smirked as it landed on the boy’s head with a clang.

            Moka rushed forward and looked down at the young witch protectively. “He wasn’t looking at you this time, was he, Yukari?” she asked anxiously.

            “No, but he still had it coming!” Yukari answered Moka, glaring at the boy she’d clobbered with a look of disgust on her face.

            Kurumu’s face broke into a blinding smile as she saw Nigeki standing nearby, then **flowed** around Moka and Yukari, then the guy still lying flat on the ground, and twined her supple arms around Nigeki’s body and jammed her soft breasts up against his side. “Hi!” she grinned even wider if it was possible. “You maybe thought any about, you know,” Kurumu started to ask, then leered at him, “ **girls**?”

            “Your friend is so pretty Hitoribo-san,” Meroune said suddenly, “Have you known each other long?”

            Kurumu stopped and stared at Meroune, who just smiled up at her pleasantly. “Who’s **she**?” the succubus nearly demanded.

            Meroune smiled wide and introduced herself. “I’m Meroune Lorelei! Hitoribo-san and I are the lead couple in the Drama Club’s play.”

            “Lead… **couple**?!” Kurumu asked, her face turning purple with rage.

            “It’s just a play!” Nigeki pleaded, but Kurumu looked as if she was about to explode. Meroune just kept shining the friendliest smile ever at the two of them, seeming completely unaware of Kurumu’s anger at what she’d said.

            “Ah!” The boy who’d been lying on the ground looking out cold all that time suddenly stood up and knocked Nigeki into Kurumu, and both of them went down. He yelped in alarm as his face landed in her chest, but Kurumu squealed in delight and wrapped her arms and legs around the young vampire’s body.

            The boy knelt down on one knee to look Meroune in the eyes, glistening red roses seeming to burst out of the air around him. “Welcome, lovely lady, to the School Newspaper Club. Meroune Lorelei, wasn’t it? A beautiful name for a beautiful girl, musical almost…”

            She smiled at him pleasantly and replied, “Why thank you! But I believe you have me at a disadvantage, sir.”

            “Ginei Morioka, club president at your service! Why don’t you come in and you can tell me all about yourself?” he offered, but his eyes slowly descended from her face to the packed front of her blouse. A second later another brass wash tub fell from the sky and knocked him down again.

            “Oh dear,” Meroune said placidly. “Maybe we should wait until you’re conscious again.”

            “I won’t let you sully another pure maiden with your filthy attentions!” Yukari yelled as she charged up behind Ginei, brandishing her wand, a flustered Moka following behind her as the chaos continued to unfold.

            “Kurumu, let go!” Nigeki howled helplessly, finally pulling his face out of her chest enough to get an understandable word out. She squirmed and wriggled against the ground until his face was pressed back into her sweater again.

            “Never!” the succubus squealed happily. “You’ll never rise again…wait, what the hell?” she demanded as someone suddenly appeared looming over them, grabbed Nigeki by the legs and tried to pull him away from Kurumu. It was Mizore Shirayuki, and claws of ice were forming around her hands as she got ready to fight off the competition.

Kurumu scowled and pulled on his other arm, though. “Hey, let go!” she yelled. “I saw him before you!”

“I saw him before either of you…” Moka lightly protested.

“Yeah, because you ran him over with your bike!” Kurumu snapped a second before she was flattened by a falling wash tub. Suddenly meeting no resistance, Mizore gasped in surprise as she fell onto the grass and for the second time in a minute, Nigeki fell on top of a beautiful girl, who looked up at him with pink on her cheeks and a soft smile on her lips. Next to them Meroune looked on, a strangely approving look on her face.

            This was what his life had become.

 

XXX

 

            Eventually they gathered inside the Newspaper Club’s meeting room. Nigeki couldn’t help noticing how Ginei asked Meroune to sit next to him, but she only smiled politely and seemed to hardly notice the glittering smiles he kept sending her way. After a minute he seemed to give up, his shoulders slumped and he addressed the group.

            “Everyone, what I’m going to say is probably going to come as a shock, but I’ve been told by the Security Committee that they have very compelling evidence of a Kamen Rider being on campus,” Ginei said solemnly.

            They made a dedicated attempt to look surprised. Nigeki let his jaw drop. Yukari squealed in fright and grabbed him by the arm and buried her face in the sleeve of his jacket. Kurumu gasped in surprise, then saw what Yukari was doing, clenched her teeth in annoyance and grabbed Nigeki even harder by his other arm. Meroune covered her mouth in surprise, and Moka gasped in shock and took a step back, then saw Nigeki being pulled back and forth and tried to break it up. Mizore just stood off to one side completely silent as usual but ice claws glistening on her hands just in case.

            “That’s bad news,” Nigeki said, trying to pull away from the two girls without any luck. “But if they haven’t announced it to the school, they must have some reason just for telling you, Morioka-san.” A chill ran up his spine as he wondered what the answer was. Moka hadn’t told this guy, had she? He wasn’t going to turn Nigeki in or something like that, was he…?

            Ginei sat down hard in his chair. “They want to know if I heard anything about it,” he replied. “President of the Newspaper Club, I hear about things, right? I think they were just on their way to somewhere else and came by to mock me, though.”  
            “Why would they do that?” Kurumu asked, pausing in her tug of war over Nigeki. With her attention elsewhere for a second the vampire pulled his arms free from the girl on each side, but Yukari immediately threw her arms around him and pinned his arms to his sides. He sighed in defeat.

            “Well, Kurono-san…didn’t you ever wonder why I was the only club member when the rest of you joined?” Ginei asked.

            “Not really,” she shrugged. “I figured everybody else graduated or something.”

            “Or got sick of you trying to take pictures of them coming out of the shower,” Yukari added with an evil grin. Nigeki looked back at her, gaping at such a remark, but then looked over at Kurumu and Moka who just sighed and nodded slowly as if this was something they’d gotten used to a long time ago.

            “No,” Ginei said gravely, and immediately everyone was staring at him, unsure of what to expect. “The other club members left for their safety.”

            Silence fell over the room. Kurumu was the one who broke it. “Gin…you’re kidding, right?”

            He shook his head. “The old Newspaper Club found out about the Security Committee and how they make it a habit to shake down school clubs for protection money. They decided to try to expose the Security Committee’s practices, but that’s the problem of being in the business of spreading news, I guess. The Security Committee heard about it, and taught the Newspaper Club who they were dealing with. The rest of the students were too afraid to do anything, and after it was over most of the club members, well…they took the point. And the head of the Security Committee said if they ever had trouble with us again, they’d be back, and they’d hit harder next time.”

            Nigeki looked him in the eye from across the meeting table. “But if you’re telling us all this now, you even called in from people outside your club…you must have a reason,” he said, fear clenching at his stomach. He looked over at Moka who was nervously chewing her lip and looked away when she saw him looking her way.

            “Indeed I do,” Ginei sighed. “I was worried they found out as much as they did last time. That they thought I knew something about the Kamen Rider they were so worried about. Well, I don’t, and they’re not worried about him. But it seems I know someone who did know something.”

            Ginei reached inside his jacket and dropped a pile of photos on the table. They showed the school swimming pool, half-emptied by the power Bloodstone had unleashed in his fight with the vicious mermaids of the school’s Swim Club. The first was just of the pool itself right after he’d scattered them all with his final attack, but the second showed a student lying on the deck next to a mermaid with a long pink tail, Meroune. And the third photo showed a close zoom of the student’s face: bruised and battered, but there could be no doubt it was Nigeki Hitoribo.

            “…and what are you going to do with this?” Nigeki asked, speaking for everyone else in the room.

            “That depends,” Ginei replied. “A Kamen Rider on campus is a serious problem. And I’ve been punched enough times by the Security Committee already that I don’t really want them thinking I’ve been hiding one from them.”

            A minute passed, and Ginei added. “But they’re a bunch of crazy thugs, and I don’t think I could really hand somebody over to them if he wasn’t dangerous.”

            “He isn’t!” Kurumu yelled.

            “There was that one time…,” Nigeki gently reminded her.

            “That wasn’t you!” she retorted before he had the chance to continue that thought. “That was something else…It wasn’t your fault, it was mine,” Kurumu went on, quietly, regretfully.

            Moka spoke up. “It’s like I told you, Gin…he doesn’t want to kill anybody. He was helping people out when he got into those fights.”

            For a long moment Ginei studied Nigeki, seeming to be trying to find anything giving away the look of a killer, or someone who’d have the audacity to strike a dramatic pose as a monster exploded to pieces behind him. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “If you were here to kill, why haven’t you? And why would you have risked exposure if you weren’t going to kill? And why would you only go after students…?”

            “HEY! What’s this?!” Yukari suddenly cried out, holding up the photos of the pool after the fight with the Swim Club. In her other hand were a stack of pictures that had obviously been taken **before** the fight, as they were of the members of the Swim Club standing out on the path wearing bikinis and showing themselves off to prospective members.

            Ginei’s jaw dropped as he realized he’d left those in there, while Kurumu and Yukari, white with rage, started walking across the sides of the table toward him. “Hey! I was just…recording those for posterity! Besides! They were the ones doing it, I was just…ummm…” he stammered, fumbling for a response. He didn’t get any further as a pair of ice daggers whizzed through the air and pinned the shoulders of his jacket to the wall courtesy of Mizore. A second later a wash tub slammed into his face with a clang that even made Meroune wince in pain.

 

XXX

 

            Quickly Moka made her way to Nigeki’s side as the other members of the Newspaper Club meted out some justice on the club president. She gently hurried him outside, and Nigeki pushed Meroune in front of him. Mizore had just disappeared into thin air somewhere along the way as she usually did, but he was sure the yuki onna wasn’t far away.

“I’m sorry I told someone,” Moka whispered to Nigeki. “But he had those pictures, and after the Student Police came by he started to think it might be a good idea to tell them. I had to show him you weren’t a **real** Kamen Rider…”

            “You have to wonder, though,” Meroune said thoughtfully, serenely, “what **is** a real Kamen Rider?”

            “Mero-chan, do you know what you’re asking?” Nigeki asked, a little disgusted by her question.

            She smiled faintly up at him. “Because I’m from the ocean, I haven’t heard about all the monster-killers out there? A Kamen Rider’s a human who changes into a form that makes them as powerful as a monster, then kills monsters,” she replied, demonstrating her knowledge. “But have you ever read about who most of those monsters were, Hitoribo-san? They weren’t all innocent victims.”

            “Of course not,” Nigeki replied and turned toward the girls dorm. “But after all that, do you really think a Kamen Rider would look twice at a place like this before deciding we were a menace and finding a way to wipe us out?”

            “I don’t know, Hitoribo-san,” she answered him calmly. “I’ve never met a Kamen Rider. I’ve only met someone with a lot in common with them, but I don’t think he’d slaughter a group of humans because he was worried about what they **might** do.”

 

XXX

           

            After he’d dropped off Meroune at the aquatic wing of the girls’ dorm, Moka put a hand on Nigeki’s hand before he could head back to his own room. “Hey,” she said quietly. “I probably shouldn’t have looked, but when you got that letter from your family it said your mother isn’t doing that well…isn’t that right? That’s the part you didn’t want us seeing.”

            Nigeki sighed at being reminded of that, but nodded. “Yes, my mother’s not doing well. I’ve never seen her when she was, though. When I was born, well, apparently I already looked like a Tear and it scarred her pretty badly. But apparently she’s gotten worse while I was gone…I was kind of hoping she might get better without me around for a while.”

            “Well, if it helps any, my family’s…not so great either,” Moka said as reassuringly as she could. “And I don’t really remember my mom at all?”

            “Really?” Nigeki asked, surprised. “I…um, I’m not really sure to put this. I just kind of got this feeling you were a lot like your mom.”

            “Maybe,” Moka replied with a limp shrug. “I… **we** never really met her. My sisters say she was weak, she believed in everyone being able to live peacefully. All kinds of monsters **and** humans.”

            “Even…,” Nigeki started to say, then lowered his voice. “Even KR’s?”

            Moka nodded a little and smiled. “Even them.”

            He nodded and smiled a little back. “She sounds pretty amazing. I don’t know if I could I believe in that.”

            Moka’s expression turned annoyed for a second and the red jewel in the center of her Rosario flared for a second, and Nigeki got the feeling she was reacting to something only she could hear, but after a second the light dimmed and she looked slightly disappointed. “You don’t?” she asked.

            He shook his head sadly. “I can’t even keep from getting into fights at high school. And you saw how bad it would be if I lost control. I almost killed Kurumu when that happened.”

            “Maybe it’s better that way,” Moka gently suggested.

            Nigeki gasped in disgust. “How could it possibly be better that way??”

            Carefully she reached out and touched him on the arm. “You don’t want to avoid bad things for the rest of your life, right? I mean, you didn’t fight because that bad part of you took over, right? You did it because you were in trouble, or you were helping someone else who was in trouble. That’s pretty brave for someone who came here trying to do everything he possibly could just to avoid problems,” she said as reassuringly as she could.

            “Moka, I appreciate it, but I’m positive the Security Committee has it out for me and I don’t know why they haven’t tried anything yet. I need to figure out what I’m going to do. Goodnight.”

            “Hey!” she protested as Nigeki pulled away. “We’re your friends, all right? Let us know what you decide to do, okay? We want to help…”

            “I will,” Nigeki added, looked into her nervous face, and added. “I promise.”

            Moka watched him go, then went up to her own room in silence. As soon as she shut the door she could hear the voice of her inner self speaking again, the jewel of her Rosario lighting up almost derisively.

            “Power like his and he’s happy to use it against vermin, but when a seasoned enemy appears he wants to run away. Good riddance.”

            Outer Moka just bit her lip and slid over to her desk to start her homework, worrying just what Nigeki might do next.

 

XXX

 

            For an hour Nigeki sat at his desk trying to study, but he kept looking over his shoulder at his tiny closet, his bags sitting out in front of its doors.

            Ever since he’d said goodbye to his friends for the night he’d been trying to convince himself everything was all right. If the Security Committee did know about him and Bloodstone, like he was afraid, why hadn’t they made a move against him? He’d been fighting monsters all over school, and even with them, and doing it with the looks and strength of a hated breed of monster-killer.

            After a few more minutes of sitting in silence Nigeki got up and started packing. This had been a stupid idea since the beginning. He was supposed to be blending in, avoiding conflict. Instead he’d just been getting into fights with every lowlife he ran into. Putting the really good friends he’d made at risk just thanks to them knowing someone sneaking around campus in a flashy suit of armor and a magic belt.

            He zipped the bags shut, left his room and closed the door behind him but didn’t bother to lock it. It didn’t matter, he wasn’t coming back.

            Things had just gotten too far out of control with all his battles as Bloodstone, and Nigeki couldn’t let his presence put the friends he’d made at risk from somebody who might do something terrible to them, just because they’d been friends with someone who looked like a Kamen Rider.

            His friends would probably worry where he’d gone so suddenly, but Nigeki sucked in a breath and pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He’d call them and tell them what he’d done when he was at a safe distance. Safe enough distance that the Security Committee wouldn’t think it was worth tracking him down. And safe enough distance that he couldn’t chicken out and change his mind about what he was about to do.

            Nigeki stopped by the tunnel that marked the main way in and out of the Youkai Academy campus. Nearby stood a ragged old scarecrow with a jack o’ lantern for a head that somehow hadn’t rotted at all since he’d come to school.

            This was where students were dropped off by bus at the beginning of the term, a bus that seemed to run between Youkai Academy and everywhere in Japan where monster families lived. Nigeki hoped it would be willing to take him off campus even though it was the middle of the term. He had a good reason…didn’t he?

            He spotted a schedule hanging from the scarecrow and felt relief flow over him. It seemed like luck was on his side after all.

            But as he was looking it over a shadow fell over him. Nigeki looked up and saw three members of the Security Committee standing near him, the one in the middle being a tall, regal-looking boy with long blond hair and a superior smile on his face. “It’s past curfew,” he informed Nigeki.

            “My mother’s sick. I’m going home to visit her.”

            “And you’ll have cleared that with the faculty, of course,” the boy replied.

            “Of course.”

            “No, you wouldn’t, because we’d have been informed if a student was leaving campus in the middle of the term,” the boy replied, his expression turning dark. “Nigeki Hitoribo, isn’t it?”

            “What if it is?” Nigeki replied, steeling himself, drawing on his predatory instincts to show no fear when confronted.

            “If it is, you’re going to have to come with me.”

            “No,” Nigeki said. “I’m getting off this campus and I’ll never be a problem for you again.”

            One of the other committee members snapped, “Just let us at him already, Kuyou! He looks like the biggest pussy I ever saw!”

            The tall boy gave him a withering glare and he sank back, put in his place by his superior, but Kuyou spoke again, “He’s right, though, Hitoribo- **san**. You don’t seem to realize just how serious the charges against you are. And if you aren’t prepared to come quietly, we’ll take you by force.” The other committee members lunged out and grabbed Nigeki by the arms and started dragging him back toward campus.

            Nigeki tried to fight back and pull himself free, but one of them grabbed a water bottle from his pocket and squeezed it, spraying water all over Nigeki from the cap. He screamed as jagged electric arcs raced all over his body. “Going to try that again, kid?” one of them asked.

            Nigeki panted for breath, trying to fake being in worse shape than he was, even if that **was** still pretty bad. He was sure if he let himself be dragged in he’d have to fight the entire committee and he didn’t hold any hope of that even as Bloodstone. He had to fight back now while the odds were still light if he was going to have any chance of getting away.

            “ **Henshin!** ” Nigeki yelled. Within seconds his mask closed over his face and his armor was hardening around him. Awesome strength surged through his body as the transformation completed, and with a roar Bloodstone threw his arms wide and the committee members still trying to hold him went flying.

            One of them desperately sprayed him with the water bottle, but only tiny electric arcs ripped across the area where it hit him this time, and Bloodstone growled before throwing a kick that launched the poor boy over Kuyou’s head. Kuyou smirked at Bloodstone in spite of this display of power. “Exactly as I thought.”

            Bloodstone stomped over to Kuyou and raised his fists high. Deep inside his mind he could hear Nigeki’s voice telling him to retreat, that winning this fight would only make things worse for them. But he’d transformed in desperation, and that emotion only fueled Bloodstone’s desire to fight, to prove himself the ultimate. And he swung his fists down at Kuyou intending to wipe that smirk off his face…

            Only for Kuyou to lift his hands and catch Bloodstone’s arms before they touched him, blistering flames suddenly erupting in his palms. Bloodstone roared as he could feel the heat searing through his armor, leaving it charred and black when Bloodstone pulled away. In the blink of an eye Kuyou was on top of him again, battering Bloodstone against the head with a whirling kick.

            Bloodstone would’ve recovered quickly, but Kuyou hadn’t gotten his position through intimidation alone. Before he even landed from his previous attack he delivered a ferocious chop to the base of Bloodstone’s neck where the armor was thinnest and then released a blast of fire that exploded and blew Bloodstone ten feet away before he hit the ground.

            Bloodstone jumped up, gathering his power as he realized just how formidable his enemy was. “ **Concussion Blow!** ” cried out his belt as he turned, jumped at Kuyou fist-first and glowing with power. For a second the committee captain gaped in alarm as Bloodstone’s fist slammed into his chest. The energy exploded out from Bloodstone’s punch into a storm of red and black globs the size of softballs but as hard as steel, pelting Kuyou and pushing him away. He gritted his teeth in rage as one caught him right between the eyes and sent him staggering a few feet away.

            Then Bloodstone suddenly darted away, running across the grounds at blinding speed as he circled Kuyou, looking for an opening. He charged Kuyou from the side, moving so fast and with so much force his footprints dug half a foot into the ground with every step. Bloodstone swung his arm at Kuyou, the blade on his elbow extending to its full length and flashing out toward Kuyou’s side.

            But at the last second Kuyou whirled away, the blade only slicing through the edge of his uniform, and as he turned fireballs formed in his hands which looked more like furry paws before he released them and blew Bloodstone away. The savage vampire skidded along the ground and came to the edge of the cliff, teetered for a second, then toppled over.

            His hands shot out and grabbed for something to hold onto and his fingers dug a shallow handhold in the rock. It was settling into Bloodstone’s frenzied mind that even he was outmatched: his power was great, but his family had made sure he never learned how to be an effective fighter on his own merit, to make the Tear part of him less of a danger if it managed to take control. Kuyou, on the other hand, was clearly an extremely powerful monster **and** one who had been fighting for a long time. If this went on, Bloodstone would be in trouble…

            He heaved himself onto the ground and got to his feet, looking around for Kuyou to make sure he wasn’t taken by surprise again. But Kuyou was standing only a few feet away, smirking and looking like he’d been waiting for Bloodstone to show himself before finishing him off.

            “Goodbye, Kamen Rider,” Kuyou said, then his entire body erupted in flames. Within seconds the fire started to reshape itself and Kuyou had become a large fox-like creature with multiple thick tails, flame still dancing everywhere on his body. He opened his mouth and a burning tornado whirled from it, engulfing Bloodstone and carrying him into the air.

            Bloodstone seemed to fall forever before he slammed into the ground again, and he could hear rock cracking around him for a second before everything suddenly seemed to go silent.

Then everything went dark.

He might’ve taken some comfort in knowing someone had seen the fight, and snuck away to get help…


	10. At the Heart of the Web

            Bloodstone landed in a tangled heap in the back of a cell in the school dungeon. The two bruised members of the Security Committee laughed as they slammed the cell door shut behind him and rattled the key in the lock just to mock him, not that he could hear it anymore. Kuyou’s attacks had knocked him out cold, and the dark armor covering his body was already starting to melt off.

            “So what’s next, Captain?” one of them asked with a leer. “Gonna put him in a glass case as a warning or something?”

            “Oh, I’ll have to think about that a bit,” Kuyou smirked. “This isn’t just some student with a big mouth, after all.”

            “Sir?”

            He turned and looked over his shoulder at another member of the group, a tall, busty girl with a long blonde ponytail. The name plate on her dark uniform read C. Shianus. She looked through the bars at Nigeki’s battered body, his uniform scorched and torn from Kuyou’s devastating attacks on him. His mask had already vanished, and the expression left on his face was one of fear and pain.

            “What is it, Centorea?” Kuyou asked, smirking a little more. “We’ve caught a dangerous monster hunter before any serious harm could be done. You should be proud, you suspected him from the beginning, didn’t you?”

            “That’s just it, sir,” Centorea replied. “Why would a vampire be a monster hunter? Why would he risk revealing himself to protect students if he was here to kill monsters? You yourself were happy to deal with Kotsubo, and if the victim’s to be believed, he,” she pointed into the cell at Nigeki, “was the one who stopped him from assaulting her.”

            “You think so highly of your station yet you see so little,” Kuyou said. “He was probably taking a few students into his confidence, pretending to be one of them to help them in some plan to destroy the school, if not our world completely. In a way, it’s brilliant. How else was one of these Riders supposed to get past the barrier, other than to have a monster do it for them?”

            But she almost didn’t hear him, staring through the bars as Bloodstone’s armor finished sloughing off him leaving nothing but a battered teen vampire lying motionless in the back of one of their cells. Could he really have been planning to destroy the school?

            “Come along, Centorea,” Kuyou interrupted her thoughts. “We’ve an announcement to make. After all, we’ve just saved the entire school from a Kamen Rider! This is a day that will go down in history!” He laughed and the others laughed along with him. Centorea cast one last look back at Nigeki, then hurried after them, a look of confusion on her face.

But Kuyou and his underlings had no way of knowing that Bloodstone had lost consciousness without making sure he couldn’t dream. And without him able to resist, the darkness inside of him started to grow.

“All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to dust…All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to dust…”

 

XXX

 

            Miss Bast sighed as she typed out a short report on Nigeki Hitoribo; how he was doing in his activity, in his classes, and, candidly, how he’d been doing in the fights with other monsters at this school he’d been getting into.

            She had followed, carefully keeping an eye on him and making sure not to be seen. But every instinct of hers had told her to ignore the Headmaster’s instructions, to get involved and let the kid off the hook of having to deal with every thug that came his way on his own. However powerful he had the potential to be and however important this upcoming threat the Headmaster was still keeping quiet about might be either.

            That wasn’t how it should be. The biggest problem kids his age were supposed to have was not getting caught sneaking out for dates, forget fighting for their lives.

            But she’d agreed to do this because the Headmaster had made it sound important. Dropped out of her new band, traveled across the world and taken this job because he’d made it sound like a huge deal, and she knew from her own experiences she couldn’t ignore it.

She knew better than most how even if a peaceful monster tried to just keep their head down and avoid trouble, there always seemed to be some new monolithic threat waiting for the one before it to fall, so it could rise up and try to destroy everything like the one before it had tried to do, even if its reasons for trying might be a little different. If some new global threat like that was coming, then yes, they needed to be prepared.

But since when did that mean they needed to have kids on the front lines?

Suddenly there was a loud banging at her door, making Miss Bast jump. She almost landed on all fours in feline battle-readiness before realizing this probably wasn’t an attack; why would someone bent on attacking her show decent manners? She opened the door and standing out in the hall was Mizore Shirayuki.

“What are you doing here? Students aren’t allowed.”

Mizore didn’t acknowledge that statement. All she said, nearly whispered, was, “Nigeki’s in trouble.”

            “What?” Bast asked.

            “The Student Police attacked him and took him away,” Mizore answered, tonelessly. “I need help getting him back.”

            “And how do you know he was attacked and taken away, but you’re here telling me about it now?”

            “I was in the bushes watching him,” Mizore replied with no hesitation or shame whatsoever.

            “ **Why**??”

            “Because it’s what I do,” Mizore answered as if it was the most casual thing in the world.

            Miss Bast decided to ignore that last remark. If the student she was supposed to be keeping an eye on had been attacked and carried off, she needed to do something. But at the same time, the Headmaster had told her to observe and guide Nigeki as gently as she could so she didn’t tip him off she was keeping an eye on him. **No matter what**. Meaning she couldn’t expect a lot of help there.

That is, if she went and asked for help by herself…

            But after that morning, she knew she wasn’t the only faculty member interested in his welfare.

            “Come on,” Miss Bast said and headed down toward the end of the hall. She spotted the nametag reading “Dreemurr” and gave the door a sharp knock. A minute later Mrs. Dreemurr appeared in the doorway, half-moon reading glasses balanced on her nose and a book tucked under one arm. Miss Bast could read something about snails from the title, but that was all.

            “Hello, can I help you?” Mrs. Dreemurr asked, looking a little surprised and more than a little cautious at being disturbed so late by people she didn’t know.

            “Nigeki Hitoribo’s in trouble with the Security Committee,” Miss Bast said, and Mrs. Dreemurr sighed.

            “I tried to warn the Headmaster about them,” she said, and Bast’s heart sank. “He just said something about needing to ensure the school’s protection, letting the students know they’re safe at all times. I was going to talk to the boy, see what he felt he should do, but now…”

            Bast took her by the wrist and started dragging her out of her room. “ **Now** , there’s two of us, and maybe two can do a job one couldn’t.”

 

XXX

 

            “Still having second thoughts, Cerea?” Kuyou asked over his shoulder, that smug little smile of his seeming even colder.

            Behind him Centorea fumed inwardly. He was her captain, but that **didn’t** mean he was familiar enough to her to be using that nickname. She’d joined the Security Committee because they were protecting the students from all the dangers the world held for monsters. But…

            “He’s just a kid like us. You even said he was trying to leave when you caught him. He was waiting for the bus. If he was some kind of infiltrator, why would he be taking the bus to leave?” she asked.

            “It’s your first one, huh?” asked one of the boys flanking Kuyou, his face dominated by the exact same smirk.

            “What?”

            “It happens to all of us,” Kuyou explained. “Well, some of us. The first time we bring in someone dangerous it seems unbelievable. They look so normal, it’s hard to believe they could be planning to hurt anybody.

“But appearances can be deceiving,” he went on. “It’s what we’re all here to learn, isn’t it? How to hide what we are so we stay out of trouble. Perhaps some of us have already learned to do that for their own reasons. Like that kid back in the cell.

“Cerea, you have to understand just how heavily the forces of humanity are arrayed against our kind. Not just Kamen Riders, but the Makai Kishi, Slayers, families like the Starlings…Even those ignoramuses with the laser backpacks and jumpsuits have enough firepower to make them a serious threat.”

“I just…,” Centorea started to say, but stopped herself before she could say something that got her in trouble with her superiors. “My shift’s over, I’ll see you tomorrow.” She split off from the group and went down another hallway.

Kuyou waited until she was out of sight, then said to the others, “Keep an extra-close eye on our new prisoner, understand?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

 

XXX

 

            Miss Bast shoved the doors to the Headmaster’s office open, and bellowed, “Mikogami, you’d better be ready to—”

            “Good evening, Felicia,” said the familiar robed figure seated behind the ornate wooden desk at the far end of the room. “I’ve been expecting you. Oh, I wasn’t expecting you to bring along a friend. Greetings to you as well, Toriel. It must be important to have the both of you here at this time of night.”

            “Don’t give me that,” Bast snarled. “Those security punks of yours took that kid I’m supposed to be mentoring for you into custody.”

            “Did they?” was all he said.

            “You bring me all the way here to keep an eye on this kid, then he gets hauled in, and that’s all you have to say?!” she demanded.

            “Felicia, please,” the Headmaster said, limply holding up a hand. “Your heart is in the right place, don’t doubt that for a minute, but the integrity of the Security Committee can’t be undermined. It pains me to lose such a potentially valuable asset, but he’s no good to anyone if he lets himself be caught so easily.”

            Mrs. Dreemurr stepped past Miss Bast, a fire seeming to light in her eyes at what she’d just heard. “Excuse me?” she said with quiet menace. “An **asset**? This is a child’s life you’re talking about.” Clearly his remark had hit a sore spot with her.

            “Toriel, I appreciate your concern but this is a school for **young adults** ,” he replied. “You’re not from this world, and there is a very delicate balance here. Soon they’ll be out on their own, and they must learn now that their actions have **consequences** , for **good** or for ill, and how those actions **affect others**. Otherwise, our entire world could be discovered and destroyed by humanity. I can’t spare one person and sacrifice us all.”

            “What?” Miss Bast demanded, but Mrs. Dreemurr calmed down visibly at what the Headmaster had said to them.

            “Thank you, sir, for making your feelings on the matter clear,” Mrs. Dreemurr said, and started walking out of the office. Miss Bast looked back at the Headmaster for a second and caught what looked like a knowing grin on his face, then left too.

            Once the door clicked shut, Miss Bast turned to her fellow teacher. “You picked up on that too, right? Mikogami was telling us to get involved, wasn’t he?”

            “Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Dreemurr said, but the coy smile on her face said otherwise. “You topsiders don’t still make much sense to me. I think there was something in there about people who wouldn’t worry about much about breaking rules if a good friend of theirs was in a lot of trouble. As a pair of responsible adults, we should probably be looking out for people like that.”

            Miss Bast smiled softly and shook her hand. “Look, if we’re going to be working together, I’d like if you could call me Felicia.”

            “Toriel. Pleased to make your acquaintance. But now, I’m thinking we should probably go see if we can find where that ice girl got off to. Somehow I get the feeling she’s looking for a few other people who aren’t afraid of breaking some rules,” Toriel smiled.

           

XXX

 

            Mizore indeed hadn’t been idle, moving with a purpose as soon as she managed to slip away from the two teachers.

            She stopped at a door on the first floor of the girls’ dorm in her search for help. It was someone she expected to still remember being on the receiving end of an outburst Mizore’d had not that long ago, but this girl seemed smart enough to overlook that. And, Mizore hoped, she’d be a big help talking others into helping them…

            After a minute solid of knocking the door clunked and opened a crack, and on the other side sat Meroune. She looked surprised for a second to see who was outside, then managed an, “Oh, hello. Did you forget something the other night?”

            “Nigeki’s in trouble,” Mizore said with her typical bluntness, but Meroune saw a distressed light flickering in the snow girl’s eyes.

            “With who?” Meroune asked.

            “Student Police,” Mizore replied, using the group’s more derogatory nickname.

            Meroune nodded, then turned around and wheeled herself to the edge of the pool where she slept and threw off her dress, then dove into the waters, her pink tail flaring out from where her legs had been. She swam to the bottom and stayed there for a minute before coming back up and dropping a black metal box on the edge.

Slowly, almost as if she was afraid of what was inside, Meroune lifted the top of the box and revealed a pink conch shell. Mizore wasn’t an expert on things like that but to her it looked as if the shell had been carved instead of coming from nature, maybe out of something like pink marble. A circle of tiny blue gems and pearls was worked into the top of it.

“What’s that for?” Mizore asked, toneless as always.

“It’s a powerful weapon,” Meroune said gravely, and noting Mizore’s slightly disbelieving expression, added, “I’m not supposed to be using it, but Hitoribo-san isn’t supposed to be using his to fight either.”

Mizore nodded silently. He wasn’t supposed to be fighting, he was supposed to be avoiding it at all costs. But he’d broken that rule for her, and for Meroune too.

“Why don’t we go see if those friends of his from the Newspaper Club can help us?” Meroune suggested. “Strength in numbers, right?”

            “Right,” Mizore said quietly, part of her not liking the idea of having all these others around. But what they were going to fight for was too precious endanger by going after it with less than everything they could get…

 

XXX

 

            A pair of black-suited guards stood in front of the doors leading to the dungeons. They were only teenagers like her, but Centorea knew better than to underestimate them. They had to be some of the toughest monster types on campus, and ruthless enough to earn Kuyou’s attention. She had to be sure she gave nothing away or she’d be in serious trouble.

            Sucking in a deep breath to calm herself and drive away her doubts about betraying her superiors, and stepped into view, looking as confident and important as she could manage. She walked up to the guards and said in the haughty voice she’d spent the last hour practicing, “The captain wants me to inspect one of his prisoners. We’ve got a real dangerous one down there now, after all.”

            “We sure do,” one guard asked. The other nodded, and Centorea felt a surge of reassurance. “But he warned us about someone showing sympathy for the really dangerous prisoner. Someone with a giant blonde ponytail and a giant rack.”

            “Ack!” Centorea gasped in embarrassment as she realized they meant her, and were both leering at her chest. She angrily crossed her arms in front of her body, and the guards cackled at her, but also stepped together to keep her from trying to charge past them.

            “Are you going to turn around and walk out of here like a good soldier, or are you here to give us some fight practice?” one of them asked.

            “Or maybe give us something else a little more… **personal** so we don’t tell the captain?” the other asked, leering even wider, and his partner laughed and slapped him five.

            Centorea’s face was bright red at that, and only partly from anger. “If you think I’d ever let you dirty perverts come anywhere near—”

            “Guess that’s our answer,” said one of the guards. His human features started to distort, but the fur had hardly started growing from his bulging biceps before Centorea lashed out with a kick that smashed him through the doors he’d been trying to guard. He was out cold before he even hit the ground.

            Her legs had been replaced by the body of a powerful brown-coated horse, and as the other guard watched in surprise she unsheathed a long gleaming sword from her back and aimed it at him. She closed in quickly to deal with him too before he could transform, not intending to give him the chance to unleash his powers against her.

            But unfortunately for her, Centorea hadn’t been completely right in her guess at the guards’ power. As she slashed at the one still on his feet he shifted into his monster form too, but instead of growing into some powerful creature he shrank into a tiny black shape barely a foot tall. He spread his leathery wings and flew away down the hall past her so fast that by the time Centorea had recognized that he’d finished changing, he was already gone.

            But there was no time to think about chasing him down, she’d just be giving the Security Committee more time to catch up and overwhelm her. Instead Centorea ducked her head and galloped down the hall toward the dungeons.

            She’d been raised her entire life as an honorable warrior. Honorable warriors didn’t hang death sentences on people over a superficial resemblance. And she had to be sure about the prisoner, even if it meant leaving the Security Committee in disgrace.

 

XXX

 

            “…me too?” grumbled Ginei as Kurumu dragged him along by the arm. As she did the clouds parted and moonlight fell across the wolf’s head pendant he wore. If he was going to be dragged into a fight, at least this was the best possible night for it.

             “Yeah, you too!” Kurumu glowered. “You said you thought he was a good person too!”

            He grunted and pulled away from the succubus. “I said it was a possibility.” From out of nowhere Kurumu produced a giant paper fan and smacked it against the back of his head, knocking him flat. In her other hand she waved around a waved around a fan of photos.

            “Maybe you want us to hand these over the Swim Club! And…and whoever else these are!” Kurumu roared.

            “Maybe we shouldn’t be fighting ourselves?” an anxious-looking Moka suggested. “Or make a lot of noise? What if they hear us and the whole Security Committee comes out ot get us?” Kurumu turned to glare at her, eyes glowing red with anger, and Moka let out an “eeep” and took a step back.

            Kurumu brandished her oversize paper fan to the sky like a sword. “Let them!” she declared. “We’re not pushovers either, we’re monsters just like them!”

            “You look stupid,” Mizore said  quietly and casually as she pushed Meroune’s wheelchair behind Kurumu.

            Moka chuckled nervously and looked around. Besides the others Yukari the young witch hung onto her arm for reassurance, Enrique Sakamoto the hulking Brazilian boy stood by Meroune’s side, blushing some as Meroune looked up at him in quiet appreciation. In the sky above them circled Ren, keeping watch.

            This little ragtag group they’d put together didn’t seem like the group of powerful heroes they seemed to need to go taking on the Security Committee. They were the monsters who kept all the other monsters on campus in line, right? Their group, on the other hand, didn’t even have a leader or a goal they all shared. Kurumu had dragged Ginei along because they needed all the help they could get and he had no love for the Student Police. Enrique had come along because Meroune had pleaded with him and praised his strength. Ren hadn’t been too eager to pick a fight with the Student Police, but he said he couldn’t refuse to repay a favor.

            And Moka had to admit to herself that deep down she was there for the same reason most of them were: for a chance to save the day and get ahead of the competition.

            “ _It’s true, though, isn’t it?_ ” asked the harsh voice of her true self, the eye on the Rosario flaring. _“All of you, forming your little war party all because your panties are wet over the same little weakling who thinks making a couple friends is going to keep his inner beast under control.”_

            Moka bit her lip, wanting to give some kind of sharp retort to that remark, but nothing came to mind. Her nature wasn’t to scream and fight, like it seemed to be for some of the girls she knew at this school. Yet here she was, outside the Student Police’s headquarters and knowing they’d surely have to fight if they wanted Nigeki back.

            Should they have been doing this, picking a fight with school officials? After all, they were here to learn how to hide themselves and avoid trouble after they left school and most of them moved into the human world.

            “ _You sound just like he does, you know,_ ” her deeper self jeered.

            Moka clenched her teeth in anger, but before her argument with herself could continue Ren landed, the crinkled yellow hem of his nightgown swirling around his feet. “Somebody saw me,” he said gravely.

            “Was it one of them?” Enrique asked.

            “No, it was—” Ren started to reply, but stopped when someone else seemed to come plummeting out of the sky and landed in the middle of the group on all fours like a cat, bright blue hair flaring out behind her. She was barefoot, and it looked like hooked claws, each of them a shining red in color, had already started to form in place of her nails.

            “Looks like we’ve got a couple of curfew-breakers here!” she announced, but there was a joking smile on her face. A second later another figure appeared, and immediately Moka blushed and clutched her cheeks as she recognized them.

            “Mrs. Dreemurr!” she exclaimed, and was surprised not to hear a sarcastic quip from her other self. Instead she was sure for a second she felt a sensation of warmth from inside herself that didn’t seem to belong just to her.

            “Please,” she said patiently, “Toriel will be quicker, and with what I think you have in mind, quickness would seem ideal. Felicia?”

            She nodded in response to Toriel’s question. “If we’re gonna make this work we’re gonna need to move fast, and _be quiet_. Think you kids can handle that?”

            “We’re not kids,” Kurumu protested, but in a whisper. “And wait, do you mean we’re not in trouble?”

            “No, but a friend of yours is, isn’t he?” Toriel answered. “So we’d better get going before it’s too late.”

            Again Moka felt that strange extra warmth as their ragtag little group went off, now following the pair of teachers who’d come to help.

 

XXX

 

            Centorea finished tying a length of heavy chain around the door handles behind her then secured the other end around a metal hook in the wall. It wouldn’t keep her pursuers out forever, but forever was how long she’d wonder if she’d done the right thing if she left now.

            From the hallway up ahead she could hear screams and prepared to fight her way through another group of guards. But as they turned a corner and came her way she was surprised to see them already in their monster forms…one of them covered in leaves and bark, another a hulking two-headed brute, a bird-faced creature with thick feathered wings under its arms.

            But as Centorea braced herself, she was astonished to see them run right past her and try to open the door she’d just sealed behind her. “Eh…what…what are you doing?!” she demanded. None of them turned to face her or answered her, instead just unwinding the chain and flinging the doors open before running away as fast as they could, the winged one even taking to the air.

            For a second Centorea thought about following them, but she was an honorable knight. It was why she’d joined this group, and now it was why she was leaving it if she had to. She galloped down the hall, weapon ready for whatever they’d been running away from.

            A minute later she found herself back in the dungeons, a few guards pointing long tridents at one cell. The one where they’d thrown the supposed Kamen Rider before. A few other prisoners were shaking the bars to their cells, screaming in terror to be let out.

            And in the cell she’d come to investigate was a monster with shiny black skin, his hands formed into a pair of semi-circular blades that he was bashing against the bars, sending sparks flying. Those cells had been created to hold even monsters, obviously, but the bars were already bending and dust was falling from where the bars were mounted in the doorway.

            But with one last massive swing he knocked the door free and sent it flying across the room. It crashed into one and carried him all the way across the room, flattening him against the wall. The other two managed to jump out of the way but were caught by the edge of the door as it flew back, knocking them down too. They took one last look at their former captive, then crawl-dashed out of the dungeon as fast as they could.

            With them gone, the prisoner turned in Centorea’s direction, his eyes locking with hers. The rest of his body was a solid black shell, looking like impenetrable armor. But his eyes…his eyes looked like windows into some endless void, with small points of light flowing inside them and being pulled away into darkness. Centorea gathered all of her willpower and forced herself to look away, afraid she might somehow be pulled in too if she looked for too long.

            It had been such a terrifying, alien experience the colors and shapes of the dungeon swam in front of her eyes for a second. When she started to recognize what was around her again she made out a mumbling voice. “All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to dust…” It was the bizarre black monster, who stood staring off into space as he mumbled those words over and over.

            She was afraid of looking into those eyes again, but Centorea forced herself to look at his face for at least a second, and as she looked away she was sure of it.

            It was the boy they’d brought in, but not him either. His face was twisted into a mask of despair that no mortal creature, not even a monster, could possibly have formed on its own. For just a second a belt fastened with a throbbing red gem appeared around his, shedding a pitiful light against the black shell covering his body, then it was gone again.

            Suddenly he threw himself at her like a black spear through the air. Centorea gasped in surprise and planted her hooves before he crashed into her, pushing her back across the floor. With all her strength she swung her sword and knocked him across the room, crashing into and bending the bars of one of the cells. The overweight boy trapped inside screamed and retreated to the back of his cell, probably glad that they were between him and the black monster.

            Centorea gritted her teeth. This seemed nothing like any Kamen Rider she’d ever heard about, but she was determined to get to the bottom of this, and that meant catching this monster to do it. She shrugged off a shiver a shiver of fear, unshouldered a heavy shield onto her arm, then charged.

 

XXX

 

            It was as if there was a lake of black in front of the doors of the small building above the dungeon where the Student Police kept troublesome students. Every single member f the group had been called out and were watching the entrance, and they parted like waves as an imposing boy with long blond hair, hands clasped nonchalantly behind his back walked through them.

            Kurumu took one look at the mob then her wings burst from her back and her fingernails had extended into foot-long swords. “All right, let’s go!” she exclaimed, but Felicia pulled her back. “Let me go! He’s probably cha--” Kurumu said and tried to pull away, but Felicia’s hand had turned into a furry white cat’s paw with even sharper-looking claws of her own.

            “He’s probably **what**?” Felicia asked.

            Moka timidly stepped forward to answer. “Nigeki has this other kind of monster in him. If he loses control of himself it takes over his body. It’s pretty dangerous.”

            “She’s not kidding,” Enrique affirmed, and Meroune sympathetically put her hand on his arm. Immediately his face turned dark red, but Meroune seemed oblivious.

            “And you’re planning to just fight through all those guys? Maybe you forgot, but they’re just as powerful as you. A lot of them are probably even stronger,” Felicia pointed out.

            “Who cares?!” Kurumu screamed. “They wouldn’t all be there if he wasn’t in like the worst kind of trouble ever! **I have to go!** ”

            “Um, guys?” Moka gently tried to interrupt.

            “And that’ll make everything all right, will it?” Felicia asked, not hearing her.

            “Have you ever even **been** in love?” Kurumu snarled in retort. Felicia didn’t reply, looking over at something going on behind the succubus. It took her a second to overcome her disbelief, but Meroune, Enrique and Toriel had broken away and appeared to be talking to a few Student Police members near the back of the group. And while there was a pleasant smile on Meroune’s face, Felicia couldn’t help noticing she was holding a sea shell tightly in her hands, as if ready to use it. For what?

            With the surprise taken out of their surprise attack, Felicia crept closer, experience telling her to stay out of sight until she knew exactly what was going on and how best to react.

            “What??” the closer of the Student Police asked, evidently not quite believing what he’d just heard.

            “I said my true love is down there,” Meroune patiently repeated herself. “If you and your friends would please move out of the way, I’ll go in and sort this out.” Enrique’s face melted in despair as she said this.

            “Girl, maybe you haven’t heard,” he angrily replied, “but there’s a _Kamen Rider_ down there. Armor, mask, belt, jump kicks that’d smash you into little pieces of monster gore. Everything but the bike. You go down there, you’re not coming back up.”

            “Maybe you should let us try,” Toriel said. “If he’s so dangerous, what makes you think you’ll fare any better? After all, doesn’t the Kamen Rider win every time he fights a monster? Maybe fighting’s not the answer here.”

            “Get out of here, all of you! It’s a matter of campus security!”

            Meroune smiled sadly. “Then I guess you leave me no choice. Aquaus, ultimuus, summunuus.” She held up the shell and suddenly a tidal wave ripped from the opening and washed over the Student Police. A few had a chance to yell in surprise before they were slammed against the side of the building. An icy wind picked up and froze the water, trapping most of the attackers inside it, seemingly courtesy of the lavender-haired girl who appeared from nowhere.

A lot of the Student Police screamed in rage as they managed to shift into their true forms and smash free with raw strength. They surged over the sheet of ice toward Meroune, and behind her Enrique and Toriel had already shifted into the forms of a merman and a goat-headed monster with balls of fire blazing in her hands.

            But suddenly a blue and white blur ripped through the Student Police and scattered heavy monsters everywhere. It stopped, or rather **uncurled** in front of Meroune and the others. It was Felicia, but now fully shifted into her true form, a white tail curling out from the base of her spine and huge feline paws replacing her hands and feet, and only thin strips of white fur curving her lady parts.

            “Should’ve known,” she sighed. “It always ends like this.” She crouched then pounced into a gang of monsters, kicking and smacking the campus enforcers away with her powerful legs and paws. Toriel lobbed her fireballs at the ones who got past Felicia. As they fought hard, Ginei dropped to all fours and howled as he morphed into a gray-furred wolfman and pounced into the fray, kicking and charging.

“Hurry!” Toriel said over her shoulder. “We’ll keep them busy! Go save your friend!”

Enrique nodded and pushed Meroune toward the building as their teachers held off the Student Police. The rest of their little rescue party ran after them, Yukari waving her wand and clobbering a few monsters who got past Felicia and Toriel with falling wash tubs.

Moka squeaked with terror as she ran, but blew past Kurumu and kicking up dust. She was going to be part of this, she was going to show her other self that being able to crush another monster wasn’t the only way to be brave. She had saved Nigeki when the Tear had taken control of him before, she could do it again.

Couldn’t she?

 

XXX

 

            Sparks that were somehow white and black at the same time flew off of Nigeki’s side as Centorea struck him again with all her warrior’s strength. And she let herself feel a small rush of pride as he swung at her head with his hand, morphed into a mass of sharpened tentacles, and missed with his slowed swing. Whatever kind of monster he was, even he couldn’t stand up to a relentless assault from a determined warrior forever.

            But however hard she tried to hide it, her legs were starting to shake from all the energy she’d been putting into her attacks; his hide was so thick, only her strongest blows seemed to do anything to him at all.

            Suddenly he brought his arms back behind him and swung them forward, his fingers allextending out into long bladed tendrils that reached all the way to the walls. He slashed forward suddenly, digging furrows in the stone and doorways of the first few cells and knocking a storm of jagged rock and metal bars toward Centorea. She gasped and raised her shield in front of herself a second before jagged pieces of metal and rock lodged themselves in it, clenching her teeth to avoid crying out as one piece of metal gouged her arm and another a leg.

            She threw down the destroyed shield and rushed toward Nigeki, who stabbed awkwardly at her head with a bladed arm before she twisted her upper half out of the way at the last second and smashed her front hooves against his body. A look of surprise seemed to form on his face as he went down and made a sound like hollow metal as he hit the ground, leaving a dent in it around his body.

            Before he could think about attack again she pinned his arms with her hooves. He struggled for a few seconds but fell back seeming to accept defeat.

            “Now, tell me!” she demanded. “What are you?! Why are you here??”

            He moaned a reply, “All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to dust…”

            “Answer me!” Centorea yelled, levelling the tip of her sword at his face.

            All he said was what he’d said before. “All is ruin, all is waste, all will fall to the ground and crumble to dust…” Centorea grunted in annoyance. Before she got the chance to think of another interrogation tactic, she realized she wasn’t alone.

            “Hold it right there, whoever you are! I fought through all your guards and I just beat your dreaded Kamen Rider, don’t think I’ll have any trouble with you!” Centorea called in challenge, hoping her voice didn’t quiver from exhaustion. But the intruder wasn’t a member of the Student Police. Instead it was a quintet of girls, seemingly just students. A girl with a lollipop sticking out of her mouth and thick ice claws on her hands, one with huge bat-like wings folded up on her back, one wearing a peaked witch’s hat and carrying a wand that looked like a toy, another one with long wings sticking from her back and still dressed in her nightgown, and the last was a girl wearing a Rosario around her neck.

“…who are you and what do you think you’re doing down here??” Centorea demanded.

Kurumu ignored the question, then squealed in fear when she saw Nigeki pinned underneath her and flew forward only to stop short when she found herself looking down the blade of Centorea’s sword. “I’ll say it again: who are you and what do you think you’re doing here? And who’s **he**? **What** is going on here?!”

“Leave him alone!” Kurumu screamed. But with Centorea distracted, suddenly Nigeki grabbed her by the legs and flipped her off him, then jumped awkwardly to his feet. His right hand morphed and formed into a long scythe, but he didn’t move to attack. Instead he’d locked eyes with Kurumu who stood frozen as she looked into those bottomless voids in his face.

 

XXX

 

It was as if she was no longer standing in the dungeon. Instead Kurumu felt as if she were being pulled deeper and deeper into a black void. Even though she was surrounded completely by blackness somehow she could see a figure in the distance. Someone who seemed surrounded by light against so much darkness, head thrown back and fists clenched tight raised high over his head as if crying out in terrible pain. It was Nigeki Hitoribo.

As soon as she recognized him, everything that had happened between them came flooding back as if whatever was going on was wrenching the memories from her mind and flashing them in front of her face. She saw herself meeting with him while he stood in a tree practicing his flute. When the Tear had taken him over before and lashed out at her. Then when she’d come by his room later on to try to apologize for what she’d done. She saw him flinching away from her, then letting her in anyway.

Kurumu clenched her fists and steered toward where he floated in the void, then grabbed his arm and started pulling him back with all her might.

She gritted her teeth as she faced a painful thought: that maybe just the fact that she’d done something terrible by unleashing his dark side and he’d forgiven her didn’t mean they were destined for each other.

But maybe she didn’t need to leave it up to destiny.

 

XXX

 

            “What’s going on?” Moka cried in alarm.

            “I don’t know, but he isn’t attacking anymore. Isn’t that good?” Yukari replied, raising the edge of her cape to hide a smirk at Kurumu being frozen like a statue and sliding a felt-tip pen out of a pocket before sidling closer to the immobile succubus.

            “ **Who** are you and **what** is going **on** here?!” Centorea demanded again, hobbling closer and leveling her sword at them with a shaking hand.

            Mizore pointed to Nigeki and said softly, “We’re his friends. Who are **you**?”

            “I’m…I was…My Centorea. I belong the Security Committee, but when the so-called Kamen Rider, your friend here, was captured…,” she sucked in a breath. “I wanted to talk to him. See if he really was a spy or an assassin or whatever the captain thinks a Kamen Rider’s here to do. When I got here, he was…like that.”

            They tensed and turned around at the sound of rapid footsteps coming down the stairs to the dungeon, and a few seconds later Meroune appeared, being pushed faithfully by Enrique. Then loping on all fours was a large wolf-man. “We’re here,” Meroune said, speaking for all of them. “Is my prince all right?”

            “We’re not really sure,” Moka answered, walking forward to stand by Nigeki’s side, not seeming to notice as a grinning Yukari scribbled on Kurumu’s face. “We just came down here and we was like this. From what he told me before he would’ve had to be hurt or lost control of his emotions.”

            “He was in pretty bad shape after the captain got through with him,” Centorea explained.

            “We shouldn’t stay down here long,” Moka warned the others. “We need to bring him back to normal so we can show he’s not a real Kamen Rider like the Student Police think.” She slipped her arms around Nigeki’s body and squeezed him tightly, lightly pressing her cheek to his. As she did Centorea noticed the temperature in the room seeming to drop, and she could swear the ice claws over Mizore’s hands were getting longer.

            Meroune looked on uncertainly, finally asking, “I’m guessing something is supposed to happen from this?”

            Moka stepped back, looking worried. Nigeki made no sign from the contact and the black shell still covered his body. “I don’t know…it worked before, got him to change back to normal.”

            Quietly Meroune suggested, “Kurono-san seems to have done something to keep him docile…maybe the rest of us should help too.” She looked up into Nigeki’s eyes, then her own went blank and she stared at him totally transfixed.

            Yukari turned to see what Meroune was looking at and met Nigeki’s eyes next too. Moka stood protectively by the little witch before she look Nigeki in the face and went rigid, Mizore silently stepping forward and locking eyes with Nigeki herself. Ren went totally still alongside her.

            Enrique looked over at Centorea helplessly, who shrugged back and sank to her haunches. He glanced at Ginei, who looked away, perhaps resigned to what a bad idea this whole thing had been.

            Now what were they supposed to do?

 

XXX

 

            Darkness flowed past all around them. Small lights, impossible to identify, raced by toward some unfathomable destination. Moka looked around and saw the other girls being drawn forward beside her, and tried to open her mouth but couldn’t seem to form the thoughts to say anything.

            But after a few seconds there was a point of light in the distance that wasn’t pulled away by whatever force surrounded them, and after another few seconds it started to take the shape of a humanoid form, Nigeki’s humanoid form, and Kurumu had grabbed one arm and was trying to pull him back away from the force drawing them onward.

            Moka found herself unable to look away from his anguished face, and a splitting pain shot through her head as at the same time she saw their first meeting where she almost ran over him on her way into school. The relief she felt at meeting a friendly vampire so soon and disgust at what a fool he looked like avoiding her and cracking his head on a tombstone. Next she remembered him fighting off Saizou with awesome strength and at the same time thinking what a coward he was for needing a crutch to be able to fight a lesser monster. The fear she’d felt when he’d lost control to the Tear and lashed at Kurumu and Enrique, and disgusted at him lacking control over his nature. Understanding of hiding from her when he’d revealed himself as something that in so many ways was just like one of the most loathed of monster hunters, and at the same time loathing him herself for not reveling in such awesome power.

            Suddenly a hot anger formed in Moka’s stomach and she found herself next to Nigeki and grabbing his other arm. Kurumu looked over at her in surprise, then nodded and looked upward as they tried to pull Nigeki away, back to their own world.

 

XXX

 

            Yukari saw his face locked in a silent scream. Then in the next instant she could see Moka and Nigeki standing up to the class president and his cronies even though they barely knew her, and then fighting Lord Raptor to protect her even after all the mockery she’d laid on him for the silly display of his “Mike Jaguar” outburst. Then when Ginei had confronted Nigeki with knowing the truth about his double identity, Nigeki had willingly come and waited to hear the verdict, not trying to attack or run away from whatever his fate would be.

            She hadn’t seen him much since being turned down for a spot in the drama club, but Moka wondered how he was doing sometimes, and if a brave beautiful girl like that continued to hope for the best for him, then maybe that hope for a three-way marriage could still pan out after all.

            The young witch reached out and grabbed Nigeki’s wrist on Moka’s side, and they started pulling against the darkness even faster.

 

XXX

 

            Mizore reached out and took Nigeki’s arm next.

            As she looked at his anguished face she saw a stream of memories too. The first meeting with someone else who’d been apart from monster society as much as she had. His coming to her rescue against Kotsubo and saving her from the worst kind of assault that could happen to a person.

            And…and despite all the girls he’d met since coming to this school, he wasn’t settling for just anyone. That night the mermaid had come back to his room and showed him her performance, Mizore had seen what she was really up to. He hadn’t fallen for it either. There was only person for him, and he knew it.

            He had saved her, and now she could save him and start building the foundations of a future between two outsiders. Mizore reached out and took Nigeki’s hand on Kurumu’s side.

 

XXX

 

            Ren watched with amusement as the memories cycled by his eyes, of Nigeki standing up for him against a closedminded bully who knew the truth while the young vampire himself did not. The look of stupefaction on his face when he realized just why Ren was being bullied was priceless.

            But for all that, Nigeki Hitoribo had been someone who’d come to his aid without even knowing why Ren was being persecuted. When he learned, his course didn’t change at all.

            Nigeki Hitoribo was a strange person, but if what his female friends had been saying about him was true he was a strange person who was willing to stand up for others.

            If he was willing to do that, how could Ren do any less?

            He hooked his arms under Nigeki’s and helped pull against the darkness.

 

XXX

 

            Meroune was the last, her heart seeming to clench as she saw the anguished face.

            Memories flowed in front of her as they had with the others, of the terrifying Bloodstone catching sight of her in the swimming pool, but recognizing she was no danger and letting her go to focus his strength on the other mermaids attacking their fellow students.

            It seemed such a ridiculous thing that would inevitably come between them; she was a creature of the sea, and something as simple as water was the bane of his kind. That which was her true home could never be his.

But knowing that made Meroune want to overcome the divide between them even more. He’d endured something so deadly to him, and had still had it in him to give her a word of comfort afterward. Surely that meant there could be more between than being co-stars in the school play.

Gently she slipped her slender arms around the immobile vampire’s waist and smiled to herself. The other night she had been disappointed at how he had resisted her advances and insisted on escorting her home, but now it was a sign of reassurance. He wasn’t looking for a cheap fling, and wouldn’t be easily seduced by any pretty face to come along, and Meroune knew she wasn’t the only one of those he’d met at this school.

            It was like she’d always hoped it would be. Apair of star-crossed lovers, seemingly destined to be pushed apart by their differing natures, and by his battle against an inner darkness that threatened anyone who dared to close. A fine tragic romance.

            And none of that mattered. To her, or to any of them. A second later, light filled their eyes.

 

XXX

 

            Suddenly Nigeki’s body trembled, and the shiny black shell over him started to crack, falling away from his eyes in particular and revealing those of a scared and confused young man beneath. Around him the girls gasped in astonishment as they found themselves back in the dungeon.

            “What’s…going on?!” Nigeki exclaimed, the black shell starting to creep closed around his eyes and mouth again. “Hensh…” he gasped, and for a second the Bloodstone flickered into visibility around his waist. Before it had driven back the Tear part of his being by amplifying the Vampire in him, but now he didn’t have the strength to make it work.

            As the shell continued forming over his eyes Mizore darted in front of Nigeki, then leaned her neck to one side and pulled her collar with one hand, exposing the skin. Nigeki looked at her in horror and let a precious second pass slip away, but then extended his fangs and bit into her neck.

            Her blood had a chill to it that made his teeth ache, but it was vibrant and alive, the opposite of the Tear trying to close over him and absorb him forever. The voice that replaced him when it took over screamed in his ear, “ _Drink her dry! Sate your thirst! The flesh is weak, her death is the only way to prolong yours!_ ” But after a few seconds he pulled back from her and gently lowered Mizore to her knees.

            Immediately Kurumu was in front of him, offering her neck to him too, and he drank deeply, grateful for the salvation she was offering him. After a second she grunted and asked, while forcing a smile, “Is this what love feels like?”

            “I…don’t know,” Nigeki answered uncertainly, anxious just to take this opportunity to regain his strength she was giving him.

As he pulled back from her as well and gently set the weakened succubus down, Yukari started to step forward to offer her blood too but Moka pulled her back. “No, you’re too little,” she told the young witch warningly.

“I’m old enough!” Yukari protested as Meroune wheeled forward and offered her neck next.

But Moka didn’t let go. “That’s not the point. You’re little, and it’s not safe yet,” she said.

“Awww!” Yukari whined, frowning fiercely at the beatific smile on Meroune’s face as Nigeki drank her blood. Even Ren stepped forward and offered his neck, and his head lolled back, a smile on his face as his long hair dangled behind him, and Moka almost tried to take Yukari’s wand away.

Finally Nigeki stepped back into the center of the dungeon. The dark shell around his body had almost finished crawling over his eyes again, but he cried out in a booming voice that shook the walls.

**“HENSHIN!!!!”**

 

Xxx

 

            The entire dungeon was filled with a blinding red glow and the other incarcerated students retreated deeper into their cells to avoid it searing their eyes. Nigeki’s rescuers cringed away from it too, but then gasped in surprise as they felt a pair of powerful arms gathering them up and pulling them together against him. A minute later the light cleared, and the five found themselves crowded together in Bloodstone’s arms.

            “Is…is everything okay now?” Moka asked, a hopeful smile on her face but the slowness of her words indicated worry. She was still worried.  
            “The Tear’s gone again. For now,” Bloodstone said in Nigeki’s voice, a little rougher thanks to his monstrous nature being magnified. “Thanks to you all…Kurumu, what happened to your face?”

            “What? What do you mean?” asked Kurumu, who had panda eye blotches drawn on her face, crooked whiskers and the kanji for “iyarashii” written across her forehead. She immediately turned to Yukari, teeth clenched in rage. “YOU!!” The young witch let out a yelp of fright before Kurumu lunged and caught her in a headlock.

            “Is this…something they get up to a lot?” Bloodstone asked in confusion.

            “Sometimes,” Moka said, a sweatdrop the size of a bowling ball hanging onto her forehead. “Usually when Kurumu brings cookies to club meetings, won’t say who they’re for and Yukari tries to guess.”

            Bloodstone flinched at that. He actually had a whole cabinet back in his room full of bags of homemade cookies from Kurumu. And Meroune. And Mizore. But after he’d been stuck in the bathroom the entire night he’d tried some of Mizore’s cooking for the first time, he hadn’t dared to touch anyone else’s.

            Centorea cleared her throat to get their attention. “But now what?” she asked, walking up to them. “ **Are** you a Kamen Rider? **Are** you a danger to the students? Why are you here, looking like that, if you aren’t?”

            “Why, I’d say it looks like he’s collecting all his conspirators,” said a voice from back toward the stairway. There stood Kuyou, hands clutched casually behind his back and a triumphant smile on his face. Behind him were a handful of other members of the Student Police, and Enrique the merman moved between them and his weakened friends, inflating his chest to blast poison gas if he needed to. Kuyou’s smile didn’t move at all. “Putting off the execution was a good idea after all, wasn’t it? His friends blew their cover to ensure his safety and we caught them all at once!”

            Enrique went into a fighting stance. “Don’t try it, buddy. My dad was a Darkstalker, he taught me everything he knows,” he warned.

            “The Darkstalkers are ancient history,” Kuyou replied as he closed in. “If they were here now they’d probably be asking us where they can get a deal on denture cream. Put those hands down, boy, and this will go better for all of you. Not much, but you’ll have fewer broken bones to go along with your execution.”

            Enrique answered by blasting a cloud of purple gas down the hall toward Kuyou. Two of his underlings started to move in front of him to protect him, but Kuyou pushed them aside, and his body seemed to explode in flame. From out of the fiery mass surrounding him shot a barrage of fireballs that incinerated the cloud and went flying forward to explode around Enrique. The merman cried out in pain as he was blown off his feet and landed hard, his skin charred and fin torn.

            Bloodstone groaned, his body still sore from just reclaiming control, but stood up and got ready to fight. Kuyou had beaten him before, but this time he wouldn’t hold anything back. This little fire freak thought he was the strongest, but he hadn’t seen anything yet. His eyes started to vanish behind his mask as he let Bloodstone take over completely, but he stopped suddenly as Moka, Mizore, Kurumu, Yukari and even Ren and Meroune formed a wall in front of him.

            “What do you all think you’re doing?” Bloodstone asked.

            “You can’t have him!” Moka said, ignoring the question. “He’s not a Kamen Rider! He didn’t come here to kill anybody! He came here to make friends and learn how to control his monster nature!”

            Kuyou smiled still as he stepped out of the cloud of flame, totally unharmed. “Of course you’d say something like that when you’re cornered and weakened,” he said. “Any coward would. But there’s no escape this time. Boys, if you would?” His underlings stepped forward and shifted into their true forms, led by a stony golem and a snarling three-headed dog man.

Another fireball came arcing from one of Kuyou’s hands toward Nigeki’s defenders, but Mizore lifted shaking hands and hurriedly formed an ice wall in front of them. Kuyou’s fireball smashed through it easily, peppering the air with razor-sharp ice crystals.

“Out of the way!” Bloodstone yelled, shoving the girls out of the path of a huge chunk of ice. Kurumu landed roughly on her shoulder, but it was nothing compared to what would happen if that ice hit her. Bloodstone braced himself then swung his gauntleted fist and smashed it into a shower of frigid dust.

But he didn’t give the Student Police the chance to attack again and charged before flinging himself at Kuyou. The captain was ready for him and grappled with Bloodstone for a second before suddenly exploding into flame again. Bloodstone wasn’t deterred and punched at the flames with both hands, but gasped in surprise as something bit down on his fists. The sheet of flames faded and revealed Kuyou’s true form; a Yoko, a giant fox-like monster with four tails wreathed in flames.

“No!!” Moka screamed and grabbed Bloodstone from behind. Then, seeming to grin, Kuyou tackled Bloodstone through the roof of the dungeon in a deafening blast of sound and fire.

 

XXX

 

            Air rushed past the two vampires for what seemed like forever, and for a second Moka wondered if the impact had killed them and they were passing over to the afterlife until they came to a bone-jarring stop a second later, Bloodstone having twisted underneath in midair so he’d hid the ground first. She looked down at him, unable to think, talk or breathe.

            Then Kuyou came crashing down nearby, the flames covering his body seeming even brighter than before. “You’re just making things even better for me, don’t you realize?” the fox creature said gloatingly. “Fighting back against the campus peacekeepers at a school for young monsters, you **must** be here to slaughter our children!”

            Bloodstone didn’t reply. He wasn’t going to get involved in banter with Kuyou; the fox might be taking too much time to enjoy this, but he was powerful enough to still be a major threat. He started to let his consciousness fade and the instincts of his true vampire nature take over, when he felt Moka seize his arm and press it against her throat.

            “What are you doing?!” he demanded.

            “I’m not letting you do this by yourself,” she said, then pressed his hand hard against her Rosario. There was a rush of electricity that flung them apart and Moka’s scream filled the air.

            There was no time to waste. This entire experiment of sending him away to school had failed. There was no point in letting Moka be hurt and dragged down with Nigeki when the dust settled on this. He let Bloodstone, the primal hunter, take over completely, eyes turning a glistening yellow as he got up to face the Captain of the Student Police.

            “After all that, nothing to say?” Kuyou challenged. Bloodstone didn’t. He just rushed his enemy, the curved blades at his elbows flashing out to their full length. Kuyou flipped his tails and sent a barrage of burning spears at Bloodstone, who just raised his arms in front of him deflecting on the metal and blades in front of him, only staggering for a minute as two gouged his leg before continuing his charge.

            Kuyou’s canine face looked startled for a second before Bloodstone grabbed him and hauled him into the air. Kuyou growled and the flames around his body roared even higher, licking at Bloodstone’s arms and body, but the vampire just roared in rage before throwing his opponent into the air, then jumping after him and slashing against Kuyou’s side with his bladed gauntlet and knocking him back to earth with a vicious midair kick.

            The fiery fox gasped in surprise as he recovered his senses and got up again, looking for his opponent. But Bloodstone seemed to have vanished into the darkness of night. Suddenly he spotted a hint of movement behind a hunk of rubble from the wall of the building. Kuyou snarled and blasted a fireball at it that erupted upward in a giant explosion, and out of it Bloodstone came jumping. He came down in a powerful flying kick, his outstretched foot gathering a red glow as he came down. Kuyou breathed a tornado of fire from his mouth up at Bloodstone, pushing back against him and slowing Bloodstone as he came down, scorching at Bloodstone’s armor.

            But suddenly another figure ran out of the darkness and delivered a roundhouse kick to the fox’s side. His attack faltered for just a second, and in that second Bloodstone came crashing down and landed his kick right between Kuyou’s shoulders. An explosion of red light erupted and when it cleared Bloodstone and Kuyou were grappling while snarling at each other like beasts. Bloodstone’s armor was charred and cracking around him, but even as the fire around Kuyou roared hotter in anger and his gauntlets started to turn red from the heat he refused to back way.

            And despite the roaring flames again a flying kick came out of nowhere and struck Kuyou in the back while he was busy trying to break away from Bloodstone. It was Moka, the true wild, threatening vampire. Kuyou turned and snapped angrily at her only to receive a hard kick across the face just before Bloodstone took advantage of his distraction and slashed across his body.

            All of a sudden Kuyou whirled around, snarling in rage and blasting both vampires back with a wave of fire. Moka cried out as she went down, the only noise the savage Bloodstone made being the crash from his impact, fires burning all over his armor and pieces of the plating cracking off from his chest and arms.

            But again he got up and ran after Kuyou who dodged back and forth easily avoiding Bloodstone’s punches that shattered the ground. “A vampire who’s been taken in by a Kamen Rider,” he growled with amusement. “Oh, this is a day that will live in infamy!”

            Moka wordlessly closed in and launched a scissor-kick at Kuyou’s jaw but he ducked under it before lunging at Bloodstone, catching the armored vampire’s arm in his mouth and flinging him aside to crash into a boulder and split it in half. Before Kuyou had the chance to press his attack, though, again he was attacked from the side by something covered in blue and white fur in the shape of a wheel. He fell to the ground with an annoyed ground from the battering and looked up to see who his new attacker was.

            “Ancient history, huh???” Felicia called mockingly. “Seems like my ears still work pretty good for such an old lady!”

            “You’re a spring chicken compared to me,” Toriel said, fire dancing in her hands too, although looking uncertain what good it would do against an enemy like this. She turned back to Kuyou and warned, “Stop this, young man, and no one needs to be hurt.”

            “Like **you** , old lady?” Kuyou scoffed and launched a fireball from the tip of one tail. Toriel easily raised a wall of flame in front of her and Kuyou’s fireball sputtered out inside it. Bloodstone dragged himself up on the edge of the boulder he’d hit, a part of him seething at what Toriel had been called.

            “Try that again and you’ll get you the spanking you deserve,” Toriel warned Kuyou.

            Kuyou just laughed. “You think I’m afraid of the faculty either?! You’re nothing to me, **and** you’re aiding a monster killer who’s infiltrated the campus! You’re just making me an even bigger hero!”

            Felicia sighed wistfully. “Ah, to be young again. To have everything figured out already.”

            “You had that too, huh?” Toriel asked. “I thought I was the only one.”

            “Are you two going to talk like a couple old ladies or are you going to worry about beating the enemy?” Moka snapped at them. As if out of nowhere Bloodstone appeared behind her.

            “Watch your mouth,” he growled at her. Moka’s face tightened in silent irritation.

            Kyou sighed at the assembled group facing him down, then grinned. “It looks like I’ll have to make this extra spectacular. Oh well,” he said, then he started to glow. Not burn as before, but emit a dazzling white light. Bloodstone and Moka launched themselves into the heart of the light but something grabbed them both by the neck before they could hit Kuyou.

            Again he’d changed, this time into a humanoid form wreathed in soft blue flames, vulpine ears poking through his long blond hair and a triumphant smile on his face. Four tails, now made of pure blue fire, extended out from his back.

            “Vampires, aristocracy of the night,” he grinned. “Looks like you’ve been on top so long you think there’s nobody around who can knock you off your little perch. Let me correct that for you!”

            He threw them away from him and launched a pair of fireballs after them that flew together into one massive ball and exploded in the air just behind them, flinging the two vampires to the ground like ragdolls. Kuyou jumped through the air and landed on their backs, his body burning brighter and hotter every second. Moka cried out by rolled over and kicked Kuyou’s leg off her, and Bloodstone rolled into a crouch and rushed Kuyou slashing repeatedly with his blades but the fiery monster danced out of the way half a second too quickly each time.

            Suddenly Kuyou pressed his hand against Bloodstone’s chest and a deafening explosion ripped from his palm and blew the armored vampire away. Bloodstone arced through the air and crashed at Toriel and Felicia’s feet, a gaping hole burnt in his chest armor and a patch of red, scorched skin visible underneath. Moka threw a flurry of kicks at Kuyou, but he stood still just absorbing the blows for a second before grabbing her by the leg and tossing her away to land beside Bloodstone.

            Toriel let out a squeak of alarm at the sight of Bloodstone’s injury but turned to face Kuyou, a fire of her own burning in her eyes. “ **Stop this** ,” she said warningly. “Would we have to hide from people like the real Kamen Riders if it wasn’t for monsters like you?”

            “You know what, you’ve set me straight. From now on, I’ll make sure to set a good, peaceful example so humans like that can just rush in and wipe us all out!” Kuyou roared. The blue flame around his body grew brighter and a column of it formed around him then spread out in a wave in all directions.

            Toriel blasted at it with all her might and Felicia rolled into a ball and sped at it, trying to crash through, but Kuyou’s wave kept coming and slammed into them both, knocking them down. Bloodstone finally staggered to his feet, the light in his eyes turning brighter and angrier. He planted his feet and held out his hands in front of him to catch the wave Kuyou had created.

            It slammed into him like a wrecking ball, and a horrific surge of pain ripped through Bloodstone’s body from his hands down to his feet. His body quivered but he held his ground and pushed back. One step. Then another. He screamed out as his hands started to burn through his gauntlets but still he pushed back against the wave. Finally he screamed and shoved it with all his strength and the wave cracked and then seemed to shatter, flying into the sky and fading from sight.

            “What?” gasped a stupefied Kuyou.

            “You think you’re so powerful, you think you’re a hunter or something?!” Bloodstone roared. “I’ll show you power! The power of the people who dragged me back from darkness!”

            He brought back one still-smoldering fist and his belt called, **“Magnum Vermillion!”** Then Bloodstone swung his fist and a blast of red light flowed from it that grew taller and wider as it flew toward Kuyou, who hastily fired back with a ray of his blue flames. The two attacks pushed back and forth for a minute, but sweat started to form on Kuyou’s brow and hiss off as steam as soon as they touched the seething energy covering his body.

Bloodstone snarled as Nigeki slipped back into control and the lights in his mask dimmed, gathering all the frustration of this battle and his futile time at this school, knowing it was all over now in spite of all the friends he’d managed to make. His beam surged forward from the intensity of his rage and Kuyou let out one last strangled cry of surprise and panic before being engulfed. Bloodstone’s blast shot past until it had gone past the cliff at the edge of the forest and disappeared over the blood-red ocean.

 

XXX

 

            He stood over Kuyou’s body, unmoving but merely unconscious. With a sigh of exhaustion Bloodstone released his armor but unlike usual it fell away in brittle chips instead of spraying away as liquid. The arm that had fired his final attack was totally uncovered by the force of the beam already, and the skin underneath reddened from the heat.

            Nigeki slumped against one of the dead trees and sighed heavily, totally spent from the battle even with all the blood his friends had let him take.

            His friends. They’d risked a fight with the Student Police to come and collect him, then given him their very blood to let him fight back against the Tear inside him. Even if Nigeki had absolutely failed to stay out of trouble, he’d managed to find some pretty great people here.

            Suddenly Nigeki’s instincts screamed a warning, and even as tired as he was he looked up to see Moka looming over him. Her expression was neutral, but even in the shape he was in he could tell her cold gazing was studying him.

            “What is it?” he asked to break the silence. She replied by plucking out the Rosario still clutched in his hand, the one that had shot off his final attack, and wordlessly attached it to her choker again.

            She shimmered and after a second the gentle pink-haired Moka was kneeling by his side, giving him a concerned look. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly, as if it was a stupid question.  
            “I don’t know,” Nigeki replied, but forced a smile. “I can’t really feel anything right now.”

            “That’s not much of a surprise,” Toriel observed as she and Felicia limped over. “I’ve never seen a monster give off so much power as that last trick of yours.”

            “Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can,” Nigeki muttered. “Tomorrow I’m getting kicked out of school.”

            “For what?” Felicia asked. “That guy wasn’t protecting the students.”

            Nigeki sighed and rested his forehead against his knees. “My family still didn’t say anything about the Tear in me or how I was keeping it under control. They never would’ve let me in if we had.”

            One side of Felicia’s mouth turned up in a faint smirk. “We’ll see.”

            Moka gave her friend a worried look and found the courage to place her hand on his shoulder. “But why did you change? Did they hurt you that much?” she asked.

            “No,” Nigeki replied. “I think it was more because I got knocked out without taking my pill to make sure I don’t dream. If I have nightmares the Tear just eats it right up, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it from taking over unless I wake up in time.”

            Toriel gaped at him for a second before kneeling in front of the young vampire herself. “You can’t dream when you sleep? You poor, poor thing,” she said and cupped his face supportively in her soft, fuzzy hands while she tried to give him a reassuring smile. His vision around Toriel seemed to blur, and somehow Nigeki thought it had nothing to do with his exhaustion.

            “OHMYGODTHEREYOUAREAREYOUOKAY?!?!?!?!?!” someone yelled before Nigeki felt someone slam into him and wrap around his neck, choking the breath from his lungs. As the world blurred in and out from lack of oxygen he saw Felicia grinning as she held up her phone and snapped a picture.

            This was what his life had become.


	11. And the Dust Shall Settle

Nigeki spent the next week wrapped in bandages and expecting any minute to have someone show up and escort him off campus. He went to his classes and his club as he always had, but most of the other kids hadn’t paid any attention to him before. Now everyone seemed to notice him coming and go out of their way to keep from getting too close to him. Someone had even snuck into the theatre and found the poster art the Drama Club had been working on for their production, and painted Bloodstone’s mask over the Phantom’s face and a severed head dangling from his outstretched hand by its hair.

            Somebody on the Student Police had let it slip that he was the one at the center of all the hell that had broken loose, evidently. One last act of defiance for having their racket ruined before being expelled, or worse. The friends who’d risked it all for Nigeki’s sake had stayed by him, thankfully, sitting with him at lunch and coming by after classes to make sure he was doing all right. Not as many people picked up the latest edition of the school newspaper, though, no doubt thanks to the club’s part in saving the “Kamen Rider” who had snuck onto campus.

Kurumu had said she was glad, for her part, since it meant she didn’t have to work as hard and could devote her attention to more **pleasurable** pursuits. She hardly looked affected at all when Nigeki had told her he was probably being kicked out any time.

He was heading back to the dorms after another day when a tingle ran up the back of his neck and his senses snapped into sharper focus; his instincts were warning him he was being followed. But when he turned around expecting a fight he instead found himself looking into Centorea Shianus’s languid blue eyes. Clutched in one hand she had a wicker basket with a few loaves of homemade bread sticking out of it and in the other a bushel of carrots.

            “Oh, hello!” she said, blushing slightly. “I, erm, I brought you these.” She held out the objects in her hands. “I wasn’t really sure what I could get that would be appropriate for a vampire, though.”

            “Thank you,” Nigeki said, although he failed to keep a trace of suspicion out of his voice. “Would you…care to come in and have some tea?”

            “Tea! I should’ve thought of that!” Centorea replied, blushing harder. After a second she nodded her agreement. She stepped in and took a seat at Nigeki’s table while he silently brewed a pot, fidgeting anxiously as she waited.

            “Is…everything okay?” Nigeki asked after second. “Look, I know I don’t have the best reputation after that thing with the Student P…Security Committee, but I really didn’t come here to kill anybody. To learn not to, really.”

            Centorea nodded. “Well, that’s kind of why I came here, too. To learn. To your room, I mean, not the school. Not that I’m coming to your room for the reason that probably implies. Because I’m not! I’m here to—” Centorea stopped and looked away, flustered.

            “About what I’m really doing here, I bet?” Nigeki asked, gamely ignoring her embarrassing outburst, and set out a steaming cup in front of each of them. Centorea nodded. “Why? I thought the Security Committee was shut down. Didn’t a bunch of them admit they’d been shaking down school clubs for protection money or something, so they could get the school to agree to send them somewhere safe from the ‘Kamen Rider’ who beat up their boss?”

            “Yes, it has. Yes, they did,” Centorea replied. “But I went down into that dungeon because I had to know the truth about you. What you were doing here if you **weren’t** here to massacre the entire school. I heard they caught you when you were trying to sneak off campus and then transformed and attacked them.”

            Nigeki nodded and sipped his own tea, grimacing a little at the heat. “I wasn’t reporting back to my secret bosses or anything.”

“Why **were** you trying to sneak off campus, then?”

He sighed, but answered, “I thought the Security Committee would be coming for me after I beat one of their members, and I thought the best thing I could do for me and my friends was just leave so they didn’t get in more trouble. Looking like a Kamen Rider would’ve been bad enough, but you saw what I turned into down there, right? The Tear?”

“Yes, I remember. You almost tore down the building.”

“ **It wasn’t me** ,” Nigeki said darkly, then realized Centorea was gaping at him. “Um, I mean, it’s something I’ve been fighting to control my whole life. You saw what happens if it takes over. That wouldn’t have really helped my case that I’m not here to kill anybody.”

She reached across the table and took his hand. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. Nigeki looked down at her hand, she looked down at it too and it seemed to dawn on her what she was doing because she yanked her arm back across the table and rested both hands against her lap, her cheeks burning.

“It’s okay,” Nigeki sighed, then managed a smile. “It’s been great, but maybe my being here’s done what it’s supposed to, and my family’s got what they need. Maybe it’s okay for me to leave now.”

Centorea knitted her brow. “Why would you have to leave? You said yourself you didn’t come here to kill anyone, and you helped break up a gang of thugs.”

“Tell that to the girl who had the art she worked on for weeks ruined just because she’s in the same club as me.”

“Still sounds like a good deed to me, and a shame to let it end there.”

Nigeki raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re here to give me a pep talk?”

“A knight must be compassionate and helpful to those in need,” Centorea replied matter-of-factly.

“And you’re a knight,” he replied. She nodded solemnly. “Well, thanks for coming over, Centorea.”

“…why don’t you call me Cerea?” she said gently. “All my friends do.”

Nigeki took a second to reply but nodded and smiled faintly. “I’m flattered you’d like me to think of you that way.”

She nodded and smiled, slipping her hand over his again. Nigeki looked down at what she was doing, but this time she didn’t pull back.

 

XXX

 

“Thank you for attending, everyone!” the Headmaster called out to the Youkai Academy faculty, who had taken over the school theatre for an important meeting. A few looked a bit put off being addressed by a man in billowing white robes with an obscured face, but he went on regardless. “It goes without saying that there has been…a period of great change at this school very recently. The Security Committee has been exposed as being unfit for their duties, and while this is indeed something to be grateful for, it does mean we have a school full of wild teenage monsters with limited supervision.

“This is a void that must be filled quickly, and after what has been revealed about the previous people to hold the post, it will most likely not be easy for them to exert influence over the student body. We must find someone who is strong, persistent, capable of standing their ground, and yet also someone who will not be corrup—” He stopped as he saw one of the teachers had raised her hand, a short plump woman with glasses and a large overbite whose blonde hair had been swept into spikes in the back. “Er, yes, Alphys?”

“I know the perfect person!!” she gushed, grinning and her fists quivering in excitement.

The Headmaster regarded her quietly for a second, apparently unprepared for this, but Alphys didn’t shrink under his scrutiny, continuing to grin with barely restrained glee. Finally he replied, “Right, speak to me after the assembly, would you please? Erm, moving onto other matters, I’d like to introduce everyone to Youkai Academy’s new groundskeeper.”

A hefty man with a thick blond beard came up on stage beside the Headmaster and smiled at the rest of the faculty.

Toriel’s jaw dropped. “DAMNATION!” she shouted, then froze as she realized the entire faculty was staring at her, especially the groundskeeper who had a hopeful smile peeking out from the depths of his beard.

 

XXX

 

Centorea had left with a smile on her face a while before, and Nigeki had started on his studies for the night, but it wasn’t long before his head started to feel stuffy and he leaned out his window for some fresh air.

As he did, he spotted Toriel walking past, her soft features twisted into a scowl of anger as a hefty man with a thick blond beard and wearing a hideous pink and white Hawaiian shirt followed by her, darting from one side to the other, apparently trying to get her attention.

As fast he could go Nigeki was out his room and down the stairs, feeling an overwhelming urge to protect her even as he remembered she hardly needed it. When he came out the front doors Toriel spotted him and her expression of anger turned to relief.

“What a lucky coincidence!” she exclaimed. “ **There** you are, Hitoribo-san! Looks like we’ll have to put off the **reunion** until later!” she went on with a glare over her shoulder. The man who’d been trying to talk to her sighed and turned and went the other way, looking defeated.

Nigeki stared after him, suddenly not feeling so sure of himself, but Toriel took his arm and led him away. “Thank you for coming when you did,” she whispered.

“Um, Mrs. Dreemurr…you must know that guy, right? Why were you so mad at him?” Nigeki couldn’t help asking.

“He killed people,” Toriel replied. “It was for the greater good, but there was a better way, and he was too scared to take it. Now, shall we walk a bit to complete illusion, child?” She started walking without getting his reply, but as she did her expression softened until she was smiling gently again. Despite that self-denigrating remark of hers before about her age from before, Nigeki couldn’t take his eyes off her when she looked like that. “So, child, how are you recovering from your ordeal?” she asked pleasantly.

“Pretty well, I think,” Nigeki said. “The one arm’s still pretty sore, though.” He held up his reddened hand for her inspection.

“I’m not surprised, with the power you threw with it. You let that boy have it,” she said, then shut her eyes and sighed in pleasure. “Have you ever really stopped and appreciated the sun and the fresh air?”

Nigeki thought for a second but shook his head. “I was just glad to get off the estate and come here.”

“Well, I lived in caves all my life. Getting out of that was like coming to a whole other world,” she sighed happily once again. “I know this world has its problems too, but it’s probably better than being stuck in your family’s house your entire life, isn’t it?”

“It has been,” Nigeki admitted. “I have actual, honest-to-god friends here…some of them want to move to the next stage a little too fast for me, but that’s probably better than being at home. Everybody hates me there.” Even with all the fights he’d gotten into and some of the beatings he’d taken, at least here he and the other monsters he’d met were doing things on their own terms.

But another thought occurred to him. “Mrs. Dreemur? Should we really be walking like this?” he indicated their intertwined arms with his free hand. “It kind of looks like we’re on a date or something.”

“Oh?” she asked. Nigeki didn’t repl. His attention had been seized by someone crossing their path a few dozen yards in front of them. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man with a curly brown but graying beard, wearing an elegant black suit. His stride was long and confident, but his eyelids drooped slightly, betraying a deeply-rooted exhaustion. He walked up the steps of the main building and disappeared inside.

“Child?” Toriel asked, a little uncertainly. “Do you know that man?”

“He’s my father.”

 

XXX

 

            The nervous secretary brought in a third cup of coffee, straight black, as the imposing vampire had told her and collected his previous cup and left without saying a word. He’d tried to take down some of the books lining the walls to pass the time while he waited only to find they were actually nailed down. How pretentious. As each minute passed he was more and more sure that his host was keeping him waiting just to toy with him.

            Finally the door clicked, and in strode the Headmaster, a slightly smirking look on his face. “Thank you for your patience! There’ve been some severe shortfalls with campus security lately that I absolutely cannot be putting off,” he said.

            “As if you need to tell me about that,” his guest said gruffly. “Those thugs you supposedly had keeping this school of yours safe almost executed him.”

            “True, but that doesn’t mean I would be pointing fingers in your place, Takeshi. You were hardly honest with my people when your son was enrolled in my school.”

            The vampire clenched his teeth. “Damn it, Mikogami! You think because you’re one of those ‘Dark Lords’ your concerns matter for more? You have no idea what—”

            But the Headmaster whirled toward him and interrupted. “After seeing your son’s… **affliction** , I would say I have a fair idea that something is coming, yes. Something very big, even if I do not know exactly what yet. But I didn’t make time for this visit to rake you over the coals for sending your son here without informing me what he’s suffering from. I am willing to let him continue studying here in the company of the students whose experience he’s bettered through his contact with them. In exchange for having him report directly to me on matters of great importance to the future of our world.”

            Takeshi glowered at him. “Which you already decided before I came, I’m sure.”

            The Headmaster shrugged. “These…Tears? Tears of yours are not the only thing that are becoming a mounting threat, Takeshi. We must be prepared. And besides, this way your son can make a positive difference at the same time he’s away from home so to make sure he doesn’t impede your information-gathering for these Tears.”

            Takeshi exploded. “That’s not the point! Whatever’s wrong with him, Nigeki is my son!! He’s a person with the right to decide his future, not some expendable errand boy you can just throw away if he doesn’t come back one day!”

“Takeshi…every man is a man’s son. And every man has a part to play in the days ahead. Your son’s is certainly not to simply be out of the way while you prepare to present your findings.”

 

XXX

 

            “…so, what do you think you’ll study at university?” Toriel asked.

            “I have no idea. I’m just barely being allowed to go to a regular school,” Nigeki replied.

            “Still, you must’ve thought about what you’d **like** to study when you go,” she pressed.

            After finding out Nigeki’s father was on campus, and moreover that he hadn’t been expecting a visit, Toriel insisted on waiting outside the main building until he came back out. Anytime Nigeki had tried to get up and go Toriel had firmly taken his arm and sat him back down to continue their conversation, and Nigeki had found himself unable to resist.

            Somewhat predictably it hadn’t been long before they’d been seen and joined, though. “Well… **I’d** like to take social studies,” said a lightly blushing Moka as Yukari sat beside her and clung to her arm. Nigeki had a feeling they weren’t the only ones around, but at least they were the only ones he could **see**. “I’d really like it if I could go around the world and learn about all the different monsters and humans and their cultures, and see how we can start making the world a lot friendlier.”

            “That’s a big goal,” Toriel replied. “Myself and the others are trying something similar, but we’ve got a lot to learn about your world before we can really move forward.” But she smiled at the vampiress, who blushed even harder. “Perhaps you can learn all that and be the one to teach **us**.”

            Nigeki smiled over at her. “That’s pretty awesome, Moka.”

            “Do you think maybe I could talk you into coming with me?” she blurted out in reply, then clapped a hand over her mouth as she realized what she’d said. Yukari grinned.

            “How about we see how well we do in on school before we take on the whole world, huh?” Nigeki answered her.

            “Here he comes,” Toriel whispered, interrupting them. Indeed, Takeshi Hitoribo had come out the doors but stopped when he saw who was among the group sitting in front of him. Toriel stood up, dragging Nigeki by the arm at her side. “Hello, sir! We’re so glad you found the time to come visit the school!” She placed her hand on Nigeki’s back and gave him a gentle prod in his father’s direction.

            Nigeki and his father looked across at each other for a while without saying anything, but eventually Nigeki broke the silence. “Hello, father. Kind of surprised to see you visiting my school.”  
            “You shouldn’t be. Not if what I’ve heard about you getting into fights is true,” his father replied slowly.

            “It wasn’t—” Moka started to rush to her friend’s defense, but Nigeki held up a hand to stop her.

            “Yeah, things didn’t exactly go to plan. But I made some friends here dad, that’s what you wanted. And sometimes they got in trouble and I helped out, and eventually that’s what happened. And when I got in trouble they came and helped me out.”

            Takeshi sighed and looked away. Nigeki spoke up before this could get any deeper. “How’s the project doing? You about ready to start talking to the clan heads about the Tears yet?” he asked.

            His father sighed and shook his head. “It seems like they’re hiding out from us. A number of locations we thought were nesting grounds have suddenly proven completely empty. We still have a ways to go yet.”

            “So I guess that means you need Nigeki to stay here at school for a long time still,” Yukari said with a coy smirk on her young face.

            Takeshi raised a bushy eyebrow. “Pretty quick, this one.”

            “Well, she skipped a bunch of grades,” Nigeki explained. Yukari grinned proudly and hung onto Moka’s arm even tighter.

            “How’s mom?” Nigeki asked suddenly.

            His father shook his head sadly. “I don’t really know. It’s been a week since she left her room or even answered her door.”

            Nigeki nodded. “I’m sorry.”

            “Me too,” Takeshi said, then started down the stairs, past Nigeki and his friends. When he was a few yards away, Nigeki called out.

            “Hey, dad? It was good seeing you, even if you didn’t come to see me.”

            Takeshi nodded, then said, “Hopefully soon I can.”

 

XXX

 

            As he opened the door to his room Nigeki was unsurprised to see a note had been pushed under his door. Expecting it to tell him when he was supposed to be cleared out, he instead stood in the doorway for a minute trying to understand the terrible handwriting on it, eventually gleaning that someone named Chopper Rikishi was challenging him to a fight, wanting the one who’d beaten the captain of the Student Police to prove himself.

            Was this all anyone understood? Who was stronger than who? Nigeki sighed in exasperation before he crumpled up the note and threw it into his trashcan as hard as he could. He turned on his computer, planning to send out a few emails then get to bed early, but stopped when he saw he had 57 notices on Frightbook.

            When had he signed up for Frightbook?

            As soon as he opened the window he was assaulted with pictures of monster kids at parties and sports games. Nigeki sighed in irritation and was about to close the window again when he recognized someone in them. It was his cousin Laura, the exchange student who lived in America, and she was dancing with a brawny boy with soft brown fur all over his body and fangs peeking over his lip. Another picture showed her in a black cheerleader’s uniform, cradled in the arms of the same boy who was wearing a basketball uniform and holding a trophy while keeping her up. Their school sure looked a lot more lenient about being in their true forms.

            In the middle of all the pictures she’d put up a message too. “Haven’t heard from you Nigeki wanted to know if you like your school! My friends are the coolest hope yours are too let me know sometime ok XD!”

            Nigeki thought for a minute, then hooked up his phone to the computer and downloaded that picture Felicia had taken of their little group as a joke. Or at least he’d thought that at the time.

            Toriel was examining the burns on his chest and arms, while Kurumu had come flying out of the side of the photo, black wings fully extended and tears of joy streaming from her eyes, and had her arms wrapped around in his neck in relief, but from the distressed look on his face with how suddenly she’d grabbed him it looked more like she had him caught in a headlock. It had felt like it, too.

            Yukari was running up screaming in rage at Kurumu and brandishing her wand, and the wash tub she’d clobbered Kurumu and Nigeki with could already be seen at the top of the photo. A frantic-looking Moka was running after her, trying to keep the young witch from doing any more damage. Mizore stood off to one side, her face totally impassive and ice kunai freezing into existence between her fingers.

Near her Meroune sat with a placid smile on her lips on her magic seashell in her lap, and beside her was Centorea, watching everything else going on with a look of confusion on her dirt-smeared but still lovely face.

            He uploaded it, and smiled to himself as he added the message. “My friends are pretty cool too.”

            After a minute he noticed a second, bigger envelope had been slipped under his door.

 

XXX

 

            When classes ended the next day Nigeki got one of his travel bags out of his room and made his way to the bus stop at the edge of campus again, but before he was even close he already saw someone was waiting for him. He smiled softly as he made his way up to them and sat down next to the scarecrow to wait for a ride off campus.

            “Hi, Mizore,” he said to the snow girl. “Kind of unusual for you to be out in the open like that.”

            “It’s easier to get a ride,” she said in her usual offhand manner.

            “So you’re going somewhere too, huh?”

            “Yep.”

            Nigeki arched an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Where?”

            “I don’t know. Where are we going?” she asked him.

            Nigeki eyed her for a moment, but as usual she didn’t flinch. Finally he took a brown envelope out of his bag and got a large photograph out of it. It showed two young girls, not even ten years old, one with close-cropped black hair and a red headband on, and the other girl, looking even younger, had a soft face with a wild smile on her face and her deep brown hair was pulled back into a pair of ragged-looking braids.

            “Are those your little sisters?” Mizore asked, remembering from his letter from home she’d playfully taken from him and read.

            “Yes, they are,” Nigeki answered. “Apparently I’m being allowed to stay at this school after all, if I run an errand and go find a witch named Oyakawa for them. But according to them my sisters have been spotted too, and I’m being excused from classes for a little while so I can go find them too.”

            Mizore nodded. “Sounds really important. But you get to stay in school, then.” She flashed one of her faint but adorable smiles at the thought.

            A minute later a school bus rumbled out of the nearby tunnel, a grinning figure with gleaming eyes and a stubby cigar clutched in his lips at the wheel. It stopped in front of them and he swung the lever to open the door. “You the kid I’m supposed to give a lift, huh?” the driver grinned, his teeth seeming a little too sharp.

            “Well, **I** am,” Nigeki started to reply. “But…”

            “Then you better get in before the teachers find out your girlfriend snuck out to come with you!” the driver replied and waved them on. Nigeki looked back at Mizore, and he swore she was blushing a little as she got on behind him. He knew he shouldn’t have been pushing his luck after being allowed to stay at Youkai Academy, but Mizore had been willing to fight through the Student Police to get to him, and then was the first to step forward and offer her blood when it was the only thing that could save him from his inner darkness. There was no way he could push her out.

            He took a seat against the window and wasn’t surprised when Mizore took the one next to him. She set a bag he hadn’t noticed on the floor in front of her feet. Nigeki realized she’d probably watched him pack through his window last night, and somehow he expected nothing less at this point.

            “You, um, need a book or something?” Nigeki offered as he got one out for himself.

            “No thanks,” Mizore said with her soft smile. “I think I’ll just enjoy the view.”

            Even he didn’t have to figure out what that meant.

 

XXX

 

            As the day ended and the students finished dispersing, the faculty of Youkai Academy wasn’t too pleased to be called to a second meeting on the same day, but found themselves baffled by what they’d been called to examine.

            “Can anyone tell me what this is?” the Headmaster demanded, pointing to the back wall of the school building.

            Miss Nekonome lifted her hand. “It looks like graffiti, sir,” she answered timidly.

            “Yes, it does. But does that **look** like paint to you??”

“Sir, I think I recognize it,” Alphys stated nervously, eyes glancing around furtively. How many dark secrets would she be asked to keep? “Tori?”

            Toriel nodded, “I think you may be right. But I hope you aren’t.”

            Alphys nodded back. “Me too.” The rest of the faculty stared at the message, wondering what the two of them knew about it that the rest of them didn’t. Alphys was glad, as nobody was looking at her and her awestruck expression. She’d heard nothing about doing this from him.

            Written on the back of the building in what looked more like a thin layer of gray metal than paint was a simple but bizarre message.

BEWARE OF THE MAN WHO SPEAKS IN HANDS.

 

XXX

 

            **Well, that wraps up the first wave of this fic. Sorry it took so long, but the muse hasn’t sung much in the last couple months and I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to honor commitments elsewhere. Still, here it is and hope it was enjoyable. If not, I’d still like to hear why.**

**On that note, before anyone says it, I agree, I could’ve devoted more attention to fleshing out the relations with some of the supporting characters. Made the cast too big a little too early, maybe, but I wanted to show him touching a lot of lives, not just the girls from the first manga. Hopefully that can be fixed some in the days ahead.**

 

**Next chapter, AGES begins.**


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